Florida Oranges are Doing So Badly a Tropicana Supplier is Ditching its Citrus Business

Freshly squeezed is something you want to apply to your carton of OJ, not your wallet.

Alico, one of America’s biggest orange growers and a major supplier to Tropicana, announced Monday that it is sunsetting its citrus business in the Sunshine State. Florida, which has been famous for its oranges for over 150 years, has taken a devastating hit to its citrus crops in recent years, and Alico decided there’s just nothing left to squeeze.

Orange You Glad You’re Not Florida

Florida oranges have been an iconic US crop, but recent years have left them severely bruised. According to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) data, the Florida citrus crop has shrunk by 92% over the past 20 years. In December, the USDA forecasted Florida’s harvest for 2024 to be 33% lower than the year before. For Alico, last year marked the final straw, as it said it’ll wind down its citrus division after the 2025 crop and will instead focus on becoming a “diversified land company.”

Florida’s ongoing citruspocalypse is due to a couple of factors, including increasingly frequent hurricanes and a bacterial infection called citrus greening disease or Huanglongbing (HLB). The spread of citrus greening has already driven up US orange juice prices: 

• In June 2024, the price of orange juice stood at $4.26 per 16 ounces, up 80% from June 2020.
• Orange juice futures have continued to climb since then, rising 27% from June 2024 to January 3 of this year. 

Florida isn’t the only US state with an orange-growing business. California has boosted its citrus production to fill the gap in the market. However, it faces some of the same challenges with extreme weather events placing uncomfortable limits on yield growth. Per an October report from trade publication Fruitnet, the 2024 harvest for California’s navel oranges was only forecast to rise 2% year-on-year due to a heat wave.

Just Peachy: Florida oranges aren’t the only iconic US fruit having a tough time. In both 2023 and 2024, Georgia lost between 80% and 90% of its peach crop. Keep an eye on those peach cobbler futures, folks.