How Mexico Grows Limes On Orange Trees To Supply The US | Big Business | Business Insider

nearly every lime Americans eat comes from Mexico but lime prices Spike to almost four dollars in early 2022. and stores had trouble keeping their shelves stocked droughts extreme heat and disease have hit Farms across Mexico is farmers in the state of Veracruz are holding on this producer has done it by growing their limes on orange trees we visited one Farm to see how workers grow pick and process millions of limes in the face of an increasingly unpredictable environment about 45 lime producers are spread across Martinez De la Torre Veracruz they grow Persian limes the seedless kind of Persian limes love the wet climate here but in recent years the area has faced increasingly extreme weather so how then do they grow strong enough lime trees even without seeds well believe it or not they start with orange seeds they take a mature orange stock and a Bud from a lime plant and use a grafting technique to combine them ES while it grows workers cut away any leaves that aren't lime basically convincing this orange plant that it's a lime one orange rootstocks like this are heartier so when it's mature the fusion lime plant will better stand up to diseases and climate change after about a year is but the hard work doesn't stop there is in 2014 lime Farms across Mexico saw a huge drop in production because of a plant-killing disease called hlb or citrus greenate insects transmit a type of bacteria that starves the Trees of nutrients causing it to produce less fruit so how did they keep producing millions of limes with these insects on the loose while teams here discovered they could control hlb and a disease called wood pocket using mesh netting and insecticide applications it takes about four years for the tree to bear fruit one tree can produce about 150 pounds of limes per year this picker has been harvesting here for two years like him most everyone working on the farm is from the state but in the last five years limes haven't always looked like this but a cruise Farmers have faced a growing number of floods freezes and high winds Del clima in very dry conditions the lime skin is too smooth and may turn yellow if conditions are too wet the tree will drown causing the fruits peel to split when it's really windy branches hit the fruit is this extreme weather was part of what caused a lime shortage that began in 2021 driving prices up 300 percent by January 2022 is still Veracruz has been spared the worst of the shifting weather patterns Farmers here hope that grafting will be their tree's Lifeline if that time does come in the fields workers tug off ripe limes and drop them into these traditional ayate bags woven from Agave leaves workers can Harvest about 2 000 limes in a day they load them onto trucks headed to the packaging facility [Music] this machine dumps lines onto the processing line each one gets washed with a detergent disinfectant and hit with a spray of palm wax it's not just to make the limes look shiny is throughout their journey in the factory the lives will get sorted multiple times some stations do it by hand others with fancy Tech is using those pictures the machine separated them based on their size ones that aren't the right size will go directly to Mexico's juicing industry the perfectly sized ones will head on to get exported but first there's quality control is foreign test the limes are ready for packaging and shipping the majority of the limes produced in this region end up in the United States demand for limes has been increasing for decades as Latin American and Asian Cuisines became more popular but in 1994 after a new Free Trade Agreement went into effect the floodgates for Mexican limes opened now the U.S is the biggest importer of limes globally doubling the amount it purchased from Mexico in the last 10 years to keep up with demand Mexico increased its production 50 in the same decade workers here say that demand is a double-edged sword on one hand element is but the downside extreme weather is making it hard to keep up foreign the farm can also lean on that grafting technique to help grow trees faster so they can keep up with booming U.S interest but while they wait for what might come they'll keep picking away hoping for steady weather and a strong Harvest Mexican foreign [Music]

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 1,780,260

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, big businss, lime, america

Id: 4wGVWQyLE94

Length: 7min 51sec (471 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2022