This is why orange juice prices are rising in the US

Orange juice prices have skyrocketed after Florida growers were hit last year by a strong hurricane season, early frosts and a rapidly spreading disease that is suffocating life in orange groves.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, retail prices recently hit record highs of $6.27 per gallon of reconstituted juice and $10 per gallon of squeezed or unblended concentrate.

“It’s like liquid gold,” commodities analyst Judy Gaines told the magazine.

Early frosts in January last year damaged young trees, and last fall, Hurricanes Ian and Nicole knocked down and uprooted several more trees. Growers are also battling “citrus greening,” a disease in which trees drop their fruit prematurely due to an attack by an insecticide that reportedly arrived in the US from Asia more than a decade ago.

Florida produces 90% of the orange juice in the US.

The Department of Agriculture said last week that Florida is expected to produce less than half of last year’s crop in 2023, down 93% from the state’s peak crop in 1998.

Oranges produced now are also smaller.

For the first time since World War II, when the concentrated juice business began, the Sunshine State will produce fewer oranges than California, according to the report. California oranges are primarily used for eating and not for juicing.

Orange juice is the latest food item to help inflation-weary consumers struggling with a recent egg shortage that has sent prices up 60% and consumers call eggs a “luxury item.”

Florida’s orange groves have been steadily declining over the years as more consumers avoid sugary juice drinks, exacerbating the risk to the orange juice industry as it has less headroom in the event of a crisis.

Since the late 1990s, the number of acres devoted to orange groves in Florida has almost halved, according to the report.