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.
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“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.
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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.
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.”
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“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.”
The currently sold-in-stores orange juice tastes almost nothing like actual orange juice already.
You have been drinking orange juice, not orange juice. It’s an easy mistake to make.
Orange flavored drink .
The best orange juice I tasted was in Rome at Dunkin Donuts, They squeeze the blood oranges right into a cup for you! 🤤. This was a long time ago.
There’s so much to unpack there. 🤣🤪
Orange juice product, made with (drops) of real orange!
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!)
can I just use the zester to get some of the acidic bite back into a fresh sqeeuzed thing?
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.
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.
Right I have no idea how they make that stuff but I just always assumed it contains little actual orange.
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!
Ecogreenaturalganic 100% GMO-free.
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.
you gotta try trader joes unpasteurized. nellys is pretty good too. simply rates as fine in my book, but at least its cheap.
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).
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.
Only OJ worth buying though.
I guess Coca Cola has those flavor packets just right then.
Costco orange juice is where it’s at, only thing worth buying
let me guess, climate change?
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
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.
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.
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?
Sure, until after several insect generations when many have adapted.
It’s like they say: when you’re making an orange juice you’ve gotta break a few eggs.
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.
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.
Can’t say that in Florida, so it must be something else
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.
“Ain’t no such thing as climate change!!!”
[Climate charge ends orange juice]
“Librulz want to CANCEL my orange juice!!!”
It’s raspberry jam all over again!
Only in America is overabundance a problem to solve
“My God. The Dukes are going to corner the entire frozen orange juice market!”
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.
Ngl, that actually sounds pretty good
right, who cares if it tastes like OJ? long as it’s good it’s good
It’s not that far off of a cosmopolitan cocktail in concept
Just needs vodka
Cranberry and lemon?
Have you had either, just as they are? Neither are particularly sweet. Biting into a lemon is rarely as refreshing an experience as biting into a ripe sweet orange.
Guess if you added a metric fuckton of sugar it might be palatable, but if I want a want added sugar in my drinks, I’ll have a soda of some sort.
Now stop and ponder why they’re getting this idea from an art teacher
Yes I understood the joke. Just making discussion.
Depends on the lemon. Get some lemons in the southern part of Spain for example. Those are more closely related to oranges than citrons, and are quite sweet. It’s basically like biting into lemonade.
Sugar? You mean, “apple juice”?. Check your juices next time. They’ll never day added sugar. But somehow you always get apple juice.
…who the fuck bites into an orange?
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After it’s sliced or peeled?
How else would you eat it?
Slicing and peeling are for suckers. Just have a bite like you do with apples and onions.
pineapple*
*durian
Neither are particularly sweet.
They don’t have to. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculin
At that point, just go ahead and add some vodka while you’re there. You’ve got a screwdriver, a cape cod and a vodka lemonade all in one.
Reminds me of that one essay where they talked about burning oranges to maintain the price
Isn’t that just fruit juice, then?
No it’s still juice that is orange, just not juice from an orange.
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.
The color is named after the fruit
Warning: this is orange juice, not orange juice
The sources are a CEO and FOX Business? Yeah that doesn’t mean anything to me, hoss.
They didn’t give a reason for declining output in Florida. I assume global warming related, but I wonder if there’s another reason
They pissed off migrant workers too, didn’t they?
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.
Wee bit of a labor shortage perhaps?
There is no labor shortage with current production efficiency. There is labor underpay.
Florida has been making it increasingly difficult and hazardous for undocumented immigrants to live and work in Florida. Hence labor shortage.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They also cut down a bunch of orchards to build more retirement neighborhoods.
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.
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.
I have mine falling on the floor because I can’t eat/drink them all.
