Why Most Orange Juice Comes From Brazil, Not Florida

orange juice is basically synonymous with Florida oranges are on the license plate there on tourism websites they're held up at football games at Florida but what if I told you that this orange juice isn't all from Florida we're led to believe by most advertising that orange juice comes from Florida of 100% pure Florida orange juice 100% pure Florida quality orange juice 100% pure orange juice from Florida and this used to be true prior to 1993 if you bought refrigerated orange juice off the shelf anywhere in the country they came from the US and almost all of the US production of OJ came from Florida but now the OJ supply chain looks dramatically different as of 2017 over half of all orange juice consumed in the US is important and the majority of worldwide production comes from Brazil for most brands the juice in your bottles is a blend of OJ from the US and Brazil however there are some exceptions like Florida's natural which only uses oranges from Florida if each of these cups represent roughly 10% of worldwide OJ production this one is u.s. orange juice this one is Mexican this is all other countries and all seven of these ones are Brazil so how did Brazil beat Florida at its signature crop it all goes back to 1962 back then Florida was the clear leader in the orange market it accounted for 23% of the world supply but then frost started sweeping the state destroying tens of thousands of acres of Florida's trees and decimating the world's supply of oranges Brazil which up until the 60s didn't make orange juice at wholesale quantities saw a big opportunity and started making juice and planting more groves by 1985 Brazil surpassed Florida's production of oranges there's a huge land mass in Brazil much more territory than there is in the state of Florida on which to grow anything including citrus brazil's bet paid off hurricanes like Frost's make Florida's orange crop unstable Florida's bad weather brought massive profits to Brazil's largest juice companies katralla Centro Zuko and louis-dreyfus these companies have even taken over the American orange juice industry they've bought out both plantations and orange juice factories making Brazil the financial backer of much of America's orange juice production as of 2015 these three companies controlled over half of the OJ that is bottled by a major company these bottlers include pepsi owned Tropicana or coca-cola owned simply orange and Minute Maid it's unlikely that Florida will ever regain its spot as king of orange juice Americans aren't drinking as much okay any more land in Florida is more valuable for condos than orange fields and orange fields worldwide have been decimated by a bacterial disease in the last decade the size of Florida's orange groves decreased by 40% cheaper Brazilian orange juice has some serious costs for one brazil's labor rights are much weaker than the u.s. is one report called the system that orange pickers operate under in brazil a quote modern system of slavery workers are sometimes unpaid for weeks and trapped in employment contracts to keep them in debt and stuck on the plantation pesticide use in brazil was so high that in 2013 206 deaths were attributed to the chemicals [Music] [Applause] then there's the trade war president Trump's tariffs have provoked retaliatory tariffs by the EU China and Canada three of our largest trading partners and what's on their list orange juice from America lovers of OJ across the world could end up with even more expensive juice as demand for brazilian oj increases but florida's OJ farmers already beat down by high prices falling demand and diseased crops could also be heard and as members of one of America's most important swing states could respond at the polls in 2020 [Music] you you

Channel: CNBC

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Keywords: CNBC, business news, finance stock, stock market, news channel, news station, breaking news, us news, world news, cable, cable news, finance news, money, money tips, financial news, Stock market news, stocks, orange juice, florida orange juice, orange juice recipe, orange juice health, juice cleanse, juice cleanse before and after

Id: o6lW4VvsK1E

Length: 4min 34sec (274 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 23 2018