of the Orange juice market crisis it was already talked about last year, when mocking comparisons were made with the speculation told in the well-known Christmas film "Trading Places". The situation is not improving this year, indeed the arrival of Donald Trump at the White House and the threats of tariffs even on this type of products risks making it worse. But even before the US president, those who are worried are the climate crisis and citrus Greening, that is, a bacterial disease of plants that is affecting the main exporters, namely Brazil, the USA and Mexico. This had led in 2024 to a price hike, also loaded by hedge funds that had bet heavily on the increases (just like in the movie with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy), bringing them to record highs last December, when they reached never-before-seen peaks of almost $5,50 per pound. Since the beginning of this year, according to the Wall Street Journal, investors began taking profits, causing the prices of frozen concentrated orange juice to plummet by 48%.
Orange Juice at Risk: Climate Crisis and Disease Devastate Florida and Brazil
Yet the Florida, the main producing region of the United States, is again facing a difficult season, with a significant drop in production, and things are going even worse in the Brazil, which is responsible for 75% of global orange juice trade. The South American country, according to data released by the producers' association CitrusBR, had to draw on its stocks in 2024, reducing them by 24% and bringing them to an all-time low. "The last harvest was the worst of the last thirty, and in general production has been weak and disappointing expectations for several years now," the association said. The reason is easy to explain and should be reminded of global warming deniers: abnormal heat e distribution irregular rainy, with long periods of drought alternating with torrential rainfall that destroys the fields. Not to mention that the Greening, the bacterial disease that corrodes plants and makes them unproductive, has now reached 44% of orange groves in all of Brazil and has continued to expand for seven years now. The 2022/2023 harvest had already dropped to 317 million boxes, but it will do even worse in the production forecast 2024/2025, estimated by Fundecitrus at just 228 million boxes of oranges from which to obtain juice, weighing 40,8 kilograms each.
Dark Forecast: Orange Price to Continue Rising
The forecast is the worst in 30 years and even revises downwards a previous estimate of 232 million cases. This will almost certainly determine new price increases for consumers, in Italy, in Europe, but also in the United States itself, where Trump's popularity is already at serious risk from egg crisis. Oranges in the U.S. today cost $1 each, but organic ones cost more, up to $20 each. The price of a quart-sized bottle had already gone from $4 in 2,3 to nearly double that ($2020) in January 4,50, according to the Labor Department.
