By Anastasiia Yanishevska / Getty Images
While shortages of sunflower oil, mustard and sriracha sauce aren't exactly a distant memory, now it's a breakfast staple that is under threat of disappearing temporarily from our shelves: orange juice. We explain.
While shortages of sunflower oil, mustard and sriracha sauce aren't exactly a distant memory, now it's a breakfast staple that is under threat of disappearing temporarily from our shelves: orange juice. We explain.
Droughts, floods or out-of-season freezing temperatures... Climatic conditions are increasingly having a noticeable effect not only on the availability of certain food stocks but also on their prices -- even giving rise to the coining of a neologism last year to describe the phenomenon: "heatflation." All over the world, poor harvests result in, perfectly logically, shortages in grocery stores. Last year an analyst from NielsenIq, Nicolas Léger, told us that "weather conditions account for the inflationary prices seen in a large number of food product categories," rejecting the pretext of Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a trigger for shortages. Indeed the mustard shortage was linked to drought conditions reducing the harvest in Canada, the top producer and exporter of mustard seeds in the world.
This time the focus is on orange production, dominated by various regions and countries such as Florida, Mexico and Spain. What they all have in common is that last year all were affected by climatic episodes that affected the citrus harvest. According to Unijus, France's National Interprofessional Union of Fruit Juices, Florida's production has seen unprecedented drops in output following September 2022's Hurricane Ian.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, drought and dry conditions have caused a 30% reduction in production of oranges which generally supply the American market. The French organization warns that the world's top producer of orange juice, Brazil, will be under extreme pressure with demand coming from all across the world that it won't be able to satisfy.
However, drought is not the only danger for orange juice consumption. A recent report by PBS News indicates that another factor affecting citrus production in Florida is citrus greening disease. And it's also increasingly affecting citrus production in Brazil, Bloomberg outlined in December. Also known as yellow dragon disease or Huanglongbing (HLB), this blight has been decimating trees in Florida and Brazil since the early 2000s. A small insect, the psyllid, spreads the disease. The consequences for the plants are irreparable at this point in time since leaves end up fading while the fruits no longer ripen.
A global shortage and higher prices?
The situation is such that orange juice prices are increasing, as the Wall Street Journal tracked earlier this year, while Australia's ABC reported this month that "the global futures price for frozen orange juice concentrate (FOJC) has hit a record high in 2023, jumping more than 60 per cent year-on-year."
A domino effect is expected although it's uncertain to what extent as in many areas orange juice prices in stores are already significantly higher than last year.
