Citrus > Citrus General Discussion

The Situation on Citrus Greening? Does Florida Still Produce OJ?

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agroventuresperu:
This was off the record, so I'm not sure I should be reporting it, but I remember about eight years ago talking with one of the senior researchers at the USDA lab near Ft. Pierce. I think his name was Randall Neidz. He was talking about how that disease was pretty much decimating the entire crop of oranges in Florida. He showed me some charts indicating the steady decline, and said the outlook was bleak. Basically he predicted an entire collapse of the Florida citrus industry. He said even if they were able to fast-track some sort of GMO citrus, which would still take a minimum of two years, the processing plants were built with a certain volume in mind, and the lack of volume during that interim period would supposedly cause everything to go bust.

Anyway, don't quote me on that. I'm just paraphrasing the guy.

So, what ever happened with that situation?

Galatians522:
Production has continued to drop overall. With the hurricane this year, California may produce more Valencias than Florida. The estimate for Florida Valencias was 10 million boxes and dropping last I saw and California was holding steady at 8.1 million boxes. The juice plants have started importing concentrate from Mexico to make up the shortage (at a fraction of the price of Florida juice). As a result, the juice price paid to growers has not followed the cost of production. The juice plants that remain have never made so much money.

manfromyard:
So far they're mixing Brazilian orange concentrate with the Florida Juice to make up the lost production.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-21/us-orange-juice-imports-from-brazil-surge-as-florida-suffers-setbacks

Galatians522:
Florida's Natural is the specific juice plant that is using Mexican Concentrate.

Millet:
They should change the name of their product to Mexican Natural.

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