Buying orange juice becomes a luxury. On supermarket shelves, prices are soaring. It now costs 2.77 euros per liter or even more than 3.30 euros for organic brands. While it was expected to cost around $1,800 per ton of orange juice in 2021, it will now trade at $6,500 in 2024. Hurricanes, drought and disease, global warming has a direct impact on production.
Disastrous harvests
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the orange juice market has seen its wholesale prices quintuple, a phenomenon accentuated by a historic record last month at $4.5325 per pound. This price spike stems from a series of disastrous harvests in Brazil, exacerbated by a devastating drought and Huanglongbing disease, also known as yellow dragon disease. These elements contribute to a drastic reduction in available volumes, raising fears of continued increases in retail prices. “ We have never experienced a situation like this », Declared on France 2 Glenn Beck, producer in Florida.
In addition to the problems in Brazil, plantations in Florida, another orange production giant, are also being hit by disease and extreme weather, such as Hurricane Ian and a recent cold snap. These natural disasters ravaged local crops, further limiting supply on the international market and pushing prices upward.
Orange juice soon to be 40 to 50 cents more expensive?
Faced with this unprecedented crisis, French consumers are seeing the prices of pure and concentrated orange juice increase by 11% and 24% respectively. Emmanuel Vasseneix, president of the National Interprofessional Union of Fruit Juices (Unijus), warns France 2 about a possible further increase of 40 to 50 cents per liter in the coming monthsa situation which clearly reflects the vulnerability of the sector to external shocks.
To alleviate this shortage and stabilize the market, some industry players are considering alternatives. For example, the replacement of orange trees with mandarin trees, which are more resistant to disease and better adapted to climatic variations, is being studied. However, this transition would require regulatory adjustments, highlighting the complexity of responding to a crisis of this magnitude in a sustainable manner.
