We’ve been focusing pretty narrowly on the soaring prices of coffee and chocolate in the past year or so. But they’re not the only everyday foods that are pricing themselves out of reach. Orange juice prices have also been increasing, slowly but steadily…
The ubiquitous mandarin may be the key to tiding
the world over the current orange juice crisis…
As early as last summer, industry sources started warning, “The data show that, once again, the cli-mate emerges as the main cause of the significant drop in [orange juice] production.”
A ‘perfect drought’
The same studies pointed out that the citrus belt had been affected by the El Niño phenomenon, ‘classified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as one of the five most intense ever re-corded’, since the previous summer (2023). That had triggered an 18 percent drop in global juice orange production. In the US, Florida production for 2023-24 dropped a full 5 percent.
And it was forecast that the coming season (2024-25) would also see the industry contending with high temperatures, high [evaporation] rates, and intense water shortage.
Global orange juice concentrate prices have increased 26.82 percent since the beginning of 2024. And they’ve more than doubled in price from a year ago, to $4.95 per pound.
The ‘worse’ news is, it’s predicted adverse climate conditions will continue for yet another season (2025-26). And producers are desperately looking for ways to shift orange juice production to other, related but not-so-severely affected orange cousins.
Are you ready for a change?
Chef among these is the mandarin, considered an almost ready-made alternative for juicing while conventional orange crops recover. The chief reasons include the fact that it’s naturally even sweeter and jucier, and it’s nutritional comple-ment is even more concentrated, than oranges.
What’s more, the mandarin is already produced in the millions-of-tons per year around the world, largely for sea-sonal snacking and entertaining during the year-end holidays.
One problem is, the mandarin is generally produced in places distant from where juice oranges are grown. That’s good, because the mandarin crop has not been subjected to the same climate issues that oranges have. But it’s also bad, because the juice plants are located on the orange lands, not close to the mandarins. And transportation costs for all commodities remain high.
All that said…
It has not been determined how significantly the proposed shift to mandarin juice might effect the retail price of your morning glass of ‘sunshine’. The most optimistic guesses are, prices will at least stabilize, maybe even drop a little, for the duration of the ‘orange emergency’.
And that means… In spite of the near-catastrophic recent history of the juice orange industry around the world… It appears ‘orange juice’ will remain a fixture in our lives. And an important contributor to our daily nutritional profiles.
As in so many cases… Nature is playing the ‘long game’ with orange juice. But it’s definitely playing to win…
~ Maggie J.