A global shortage of oranges that sent prices soaring has prompted some orange juice manufacturers to consider turning to alternative fruits to make the breakfast staple.

“There are three main factors driving the soaring price of orange juice, and it’s drought, disease and demand,” Ted Jenkin, oXYGen Financial CEO and co-founder, told FOX Business.

The spike stems from declining output in Florida, which is the primary U.S. producer, and disease and extreme weather events in Brazil, which accounts for about 70% of global production.

Orange trees in Brazil have been suffering from a disease known as citrus greening. Once infected, citrus trees produce fruits that are partially green, small, misshapen and bitter. There is no cure, and trees typically die within a few years of infection.

The disease, along with severe heat waves and drought that occurred during the pivotal phases of flowering and early fruit formation, have put Brazil on track to register one of its worst orange harvests in more than three decades, according to a new report published by Fundecitrus and CitrusBR.

In the past, orange juice makers have avoided long-term shortages by freezing juice stock, which can be preserved and used for up to two years, according to the Financial Times. However, even that frozen stock is dissipating because of a three-year shortage build-up.

Cools said that manufacturers may have to consider using a different fruit, like mandarins, because their trees are more resistant to the greening disease. However, that could be a lengthy process.

  • SouthFresh@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    The currently sold-in-stores orange juice tastes almost nothing like actual orange juice already.

    • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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      4 months ago

      Right I have no idea how they make that stuff but I just always assumed it contains little actual orange.

      • Jessica
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        4 months ago

        There’s a dirty secret in your glass of orange juice. Even though it says “not from concentrate,” it probably sat in a large vat for up to year with all the oxygen removed from it. This allows it to be preserved and dispensed all year-round. Taking out all the O2 also gets rid of all the flavor. So the juice makers have to add the flavors back in using preformulated recipes full of chemicals called “flavor packs.” Mmm, delicious, fresh-squeezed ethyl-butyrate!

        https://consumerist.com/2011/07/29/oj-flavor-packs/

        • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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          4 months ago

          The brand “simply” tastes like fresh squeezed (it also is the proper color and not that Nickelodeon neon orange), but most other brands taste more like Sunny Delight than actual orange juice.

          Simply is hella expensive tho.

          • Willy@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            you gotta try trader joes unpasteurized. nellys is pretty good too. simply rates as fine in my book, but at least its cheap.

          • RBWells@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Evolution and Nelly’s are the only brands that get close, but nothing is like fresh squeezed (obviously, same thing with any citrus juice, right?) so I just make some when I want it, by squeezing some oranges. We can still get the juicing oranges here, not year round though.

            • We can still get the juicing oranges here, not year round though.

              Now I am wondering if it could also just be that I am used to a specific type of orange (navel mostly but I prefer Cuties) and perhaps the kind of orange typically used in premade OJ just doesn’t taste the same? 🤔 Like how a cider apple isn’t something you’d wanna eat by itself, but they’re necessary for making apple cider (along with other apples).

              • RBWells@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                Valencia are good juicing oranges, but messy for eating. Navel oranges are dryer and less flavor but great to eat because so big and so easy to peel and section.

                Fresh orange juice is just a whole different thing, it’s not like the bottled ones. If you juiced the navel oranges it would still taste more like the fresh juice from juicing oranges than the bottled juice does.

          • cole@lemdro.id
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            4 months ago

            Costco orange juice is where it’s at, only thing worth buying

    • GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk
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      4 months ago

      Generic orange juice is a commodified product (ie, you can order a standard 1 tonne of frozen orange juice whenever).

      The freezing process destroys a lot of the flavour, so some rind extract is included to bulk up the taste.

      Freshly squeezed still has the original flavour, and not the added rind flavour.

      (I didn’t look this up, mind, it’s possibly I’ve just repeated an old wives tale!)

      • Aolley@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        can I just use the zester to get some of the acidic bite back into a fresh sqeeuzed thing?

        • Soggy@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          The zest of an orange isn’t particularly acidic. A bit of lime juice or straight citric acid would do it, or use a different variety or less-ripe orange.

        • Fondots@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          The zest has a very concentrated flavor, but not really any acidity.

          However, ook into “super juice” it had a moment in fancy cocktail circles somewhat recently as a way to get more citrus juice from less fruit and also a product that will last longer in the fridge without the taste degrading.

          Basically you peel your citrus, mix the peels with some powdered citric and malic acid (the ratio of acids depends on which citrus, I think lemon juice gets straight citric, lime and orange get a mix) and let them sit for a while, the acid pulls some of the oils and such out of the peels making “oleo citrate”, then you blend the oleo citrate and peels with water and strain out the solids and you’re left with something that is nearly identical to actual juice (and you could, of course, mix in the actual juice from the fruits as well)

          I feel like there is probably something there you could work with to punch up your juice a bit. Maybe if you’re able to separate out the oleo citrate you could use that as sort of a citrus extract. Or if you just want more acidity and don’t need the flavor enhanced you could just add a bit of acid to the juice.

  • fubarx@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    If my grade school art teacher was correct, they could take some red cranberry juice and add some yellow lemon juice to get the same result.

    • repungnant_canary@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      And capitalistic mass production with no respect for natural resources, aka intensive farming. Plants are grown in huge monocultures with little to no genetic diversity thus making them prone to what would naturally be limited issues like unfavourable weather or diseases

    • Hugin@lemmy.world
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      Here in Florida there is a disease called citrus greening. The fruit grows small and falls off before it’s ripe. It’s basically destroyed the citrus industry. It’s spread by flying insects so impossible to control and there is no cure.

      So climate change doesn’t help but that’s not the main culprit.

      • Zombie@feddit.uk
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        4 months ago

        Flying insects are not necessarily impossible to control. You can promote the populations of their predators.

        The problem is, that usually requires promoting a mixture of amphibians, birds, reptiles, small mammals, and other insects. To do that, you need a habitat full of various plants, trees, and terrains, but vast swathes of land have been turned into dead monoculture, so the predators die out.

        • oatscoop@midwest.social
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          4 months ago

          Predators? That sounds expensive, complicated, and could negatively affect profits.

          Can’t we just spray the trees with massive quantities of something cheap and effective like DDT?

        • Hugin@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          That works to mitigate flying insects but you are always going to have some. With citrus greening all you need is one to go from infected tree to uninfected tree and the tree is now fatally infected.

          Worse the tree will live for years and the insects spread the bacteria for miles from one infected tree. Florida has spent almost two decades fighting the disease. And lost badly.

          Hell even is we had done ruthless culling of any citrus within a large range of and infected tree like we did with citrus canker in the 90s it probably wouldn’t have worked.

          We failed to stop canker from spreading and canker only hurt production and made the fruit ugly and suitable only for juice. It was also much easier to manage as it was spread by leaf to leaf contact and via things like stepping on the leaves in one grove and not cleaning your boots before entering another grove.

          In 2004 Florida produced 240 million boxes of citrus. Greening was discovered in Miami in 2005. In 2023 Florida produced 16 million boxes.

        • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          that usually requires promoting a mixture of amphibians, birds, reptiles, small mammals, and other insects. To do that, you need a habitat full of various plants, trees, and terrains

          So essentially, the opposite of the “modern, mechanized agriculture at scale” that is required to sustain our population’s food requirements.

          No wonder we are seeing an insect apocalypse and a bird apocalypse, and a massive decline of all species, and hundreds of extinctions each year…

          We’re fucked.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      A blight in this case. It’s been happening for a while. I think Arizona’s drier climate is the only place to reliably grow it right now.

  • danc4498@lemmy.world
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    They didn’t give a reason for declining output in Florida. I assume global warming related, but I wonder if there’s another reason

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukOP
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      4 months ago

      They didn’t give a reason for declining output in Florida.

      It does say:

      On top of that, Florida has been hit by a series of hurricanes as well as the greening disease, which is spread by a tiny insect called the Asian citrus psyllid.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        There’s also the fact that Florida just chased away all the migrant workers and undocumented workers. Bit of a labor shortage down there at the moment.

        • Hugin@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          We did chase away a lot of the migrant workers and climate change is very real. However it’s the citrus greening that is to blame. We don’t even need the citrus pickers because there is nothing to pick.

          Here is a picture of an orange on one of my trees. Itt should be much bigger starting to turn yellow and unblemished. It will get a little bigger stay green and then fall off.

    • Kraven_the_Hunter@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      Chasing out all of the migrant labor with threats of legal action and/or violence.

      They just didn’t want to say that for some reason.

      • uis@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        There is no labor shortage with current production efficiency. There is labor underpay.

        • Drusas@kbin.run
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          4 months ago

          Florida has been making it increasingly difficult and hazardous for undocumented immigrants to live and work in Florida. Hence labor shortage.

          • uis@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            Not labor shortage, but cheap/almost-slave labor shortage.

            I hope unions in Florida will use this situation to greatly improve working conditions and increase workers’ wages.

            Also quick search shows there are layoffs in Florida anyway, so again, not labor shortage, but almost-slave labor shortage.

            • Drusas@kbin.run
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              4 months ago

              Argue semantics all you want. It is a labor shortage caused by Republican policies which keep out the cheap labor while doing nothing to address the gap that creates.

  • The Pantser@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Best thing about the color and fruit having the same name is as long as the juice color is the same it will always be Orange Juice.

  • Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    It isn’t just ’ freezing juice stock’, really that hasn’t been the way things have been done in a long time.

    JuicePaks from givaudan have been normalized since maybe the '80’s.

    Consumers expect orange juice to taste like ‘orange juice’, year round, whether it was a good or bad year. There isn’t anything intrinsically bad about that anymore than expecting bananas to taste like Cavendish.

    The world is changing though, and tastes will have to adapt.

  • tektite@slrpnk.net
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    4 months ago

    Oh how the tables have turned…

    https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220627-how-orange-juice-took-over-the-breakfast-table

    “The innovation [of concentrated juice] arrived as Florida growers were dealing with cyclical, massive overproduction. The promise of a new way to make juice that could be kept frozen, then reconstituted in people’s homes, prompted them into even more production, however. They ramped up tree planting in the 1940s. The oranges went to frozen concentrate and eventually, to chilled juice, an industry term for the refrigerated product. If juice could be kept in stasis, held in waiting for a consumer’s glass, then the only problem was ramping up demand as much as possible.”

    “It had taken a few decades, but with the help of advertising and processing technology, the dumping ground for extra oranges was solidly ensconced as its own product, far outpacing oranges themselves in sales.”

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    “Ain’t no such thing as climate change!!!”

    [Climate charge ends orange juice]

    “Librulz want to CANCEL my orange juice!!!”

  • cosmicboi@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Reminds me of that one essay where they talked about burning oranges to maintain the price

  • uis@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    There is no cure, and trees typically die within a few years of infection.

    Molecular biologists could make tree that won’t get infected. Until ecoactivists like Greenpeace will come and uproot the trees.

    • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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      Has the disease been researched well enough for us to know how to genetically engineer resistance to it? If not, what you’re saying is a moot point.

      • uis@lemm.ee
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        Considering article about it on wikipedia was created in 2005 and says it appeared in USSA in 1998, it should have been researched.

        Also quick look at Control section suggets that it is well-researched already.

        Humanity already researched so many diseases, that biggest problem to research new one is paywall

        • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          In that case, then yup. Fuck both the corporations patenting/paywalling these advancements and the anti-GMO crowd fear mongering about it.

          • uis@lemm.ee
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            When there will be catgirls?! Yes, GMO crops would allow to use less resources(land, water and stuff crops eat) to feed same amount of people.

            Fuck both the corporations patenting

            It’s worse than most think. You can go and patent spider silk protein. Not that you invented it, but for no reason it’s patentable and such patents already exist. Literally patenting nature. Oh, also regular crops can be patented too for some reason, no gene engieneering required.

        • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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          It took centuries to come up with the smallpox vaccine. None of the control methods have available genetically-engineered trees. They can only substantially decrease rate of infection, but that’s nowhere close to 90%.

          • uis@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            It took centuries to come up with the smallpox vaccine.

            Smallpox? Why thousands? You could say millions of years, you could say billions. Just don’t go over 14 billions, it would be complete nonsense.

            Smallpox vaccine is first vaccine ever made. Second vaccine took another while to be developed. Then they started to be created much more often. In current age developing vaccine for new virus(example) takes…

            - December 2019 - first recorded case

            - May 2020 - announcement of start of development

            - August 2020 - studies ended

            - September 2020 - studies published

            Obviously you can find vaccine that was developed faster.

            But since we are talking about genetically engieneering trees, here’s example. There is fungus that threats to make Cavendish banana and first was found in 90-ies, and I found article from 2023 about Australia approving export of engieneered bananas.

            Now back to CVPD. Since how CVPD works is described in Did we both miss “Antisense oligonucleotides” subsection? Exact modifications are already known. Just insert them into tree.

            EDIT: typos

            EDIT2: export of modified bananas, not fungus. Lol.

            • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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              Just don’t go over 14 billions, it would be complete nonsense.

              Actually, the more data we get from JWST, the more evidence we get that the universe is older than 14 billion years. Some estimates have it in the 25 - 30 billion year range.

    • RBWells@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      There are greening tolerant (not resistant) varieties developed already, yes of course biologists have been and are urgently working on it. I have a “sugar bell” tree, that’s one of them.