During its juicy prime, a glass of orange juice was a standard part of a healthy breakfast. Orange orchards thrived in Florida — the “Orange State.”
Shannon Shepp, executive director of the state Department of Citrus, concurs those were the “good old days,” but she also understands nostalgia is no nutrient to cultivate a sunny future. While some sectors have supply problems and others have demand problems, oranges have both.
Right now, supply is the greater challenge, Shepp said, due to a “terminal disease” that’s been affecting citrus trees for two decades. Citrus greening is a bacterial infection spread by an Asian bug. It has blighted the state’s orange industry, and although research is ongoing, there’s no cure.
Since the last 20 years, Florida orange grove production has fallen by a whopping 92%, based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Orange juice demand fell to all-time lows last year, and this year does not look much better.
Consumer preferences shifted over the years. Sugar worries have fewer and fewer Americans sipping orange juice. When the industry was at its best in the late 1990s, Florida yielded 240 million boxes of oranges, the USDA said.
Last year, 17 million boxes were harvested, Shepp said.
“It’s a great fall-off. We hold our breath over every crop estimate,” she said.
This year’s harvest was promising for farmers such as Christian Spinosa, whose fifth-generation family farm covers 800 acres. But Hurricane Milton destroyed 40% of his Valencia oranges last October.
And now there is a new threat: tariffs against Canada, the largest importer of Florida oranges.
“Really it’s our position that anybody who wants orange juice, we want them to have it,” Shepp said.
Nevertheless, a stubborn Spinsoa is battling to ensure his family farm will have a sixth generation to operate it.
“Absolutely, we can have America drinking orange juice. I don’t see a day when orange juice for breakfast isn’t a typical thing in America,” Spinosa said.