Orange juice prices have peaked after Florida growers were hit last yr by a severe hurricane season, early frosts and a rapidly spreading disease that’s ravaging life from orange groves.
Retail prices recently hit an all-time high of $6.27 a gallon for reconstituted juice and $10 a gallon for pressed or non-concentrated juice, in response to a Wall Street Journal report.
“It’s like liquid gold,” stock analyst Judy Ganes told the newspaper.
Early frosts last January damaged budding trees, and Hurricanes Ian and Hurricanes Nicole last fall toppled and uprooted more trees. Growers are also fighting “citrus greening,” a disease through which trees shed their fruit prematurely as a consequence of attacks by an insect that reportedly arrived in the US from Asia greater than a decade ago.
Florida produces 90% of the US orange juice industry.
The Department of Agriculture said last week that Florida is anticipated to provide lower than half of last yr’s crop in 2023, a 93% decline from the state’s peak production in 1998.
The oranges produced today are also smaller.
In line with the report, Sunshine State will produce fewer oranges than California for the first time since World War II, when the concentrated juice business began. California oranges are mostly used for eating, not for juicing.
Orange juice is the latest anti-inflation staple for weary consumers who are grappling with a recent egg shortage that has pushed prices up 60%, with consumers describing eggs as a “luxury product.”
Orange groves in Florida have been steadily shrinking for years as an increasing number of consumers shun sugary juice drinks, increasing the risks to the orange juice industry as there may be less hedge in the event of a crisis.
In line with the report, since the late Nineteen Nineties, the variety of acres in Florida dedicated to orange groves has fallen by almost half.