8 ms·
What killed the Florida orange?
https://slate.com/business/2026/04/florida-state-orange-food-houses-real-estate.html?tpcc=giftedarticle https://slate.com/business/2026/04/florida-state-orange-food...
- danso 6mo agogift link: https://slate.com/business/2026/04/florida-state-orange-food-houses-real-estate.html?tpcc=giftedarticle https://slate.com/business/2026/04/florida-state-orange-food...
- catlikesshrimp 6mo agoI have to disae javascript to read the article. The article was submitted to the internet archive and, surprisingly, I also had to disable javascript there https://web.archive.org/web/20260420211512/https://slate.com/business/2026/04/florida-state-orange-food-houses-real-estate.html?tpcc=giftedarticle https://web.archive.org/web/20260420211512/https://slate.com...
- United857 6mo agohttps://archive.ph/ZnfSC https://archive.ph/ZnfSC
- peacechance 6mo ago[dead]
- exmadscientist 6mo agoThe other thing that I can't help but think has seriously hurt the industry is that, between concentrate and flavor packs, almost all supermarket orange juice tastes like garbage. Fresh-squeezed orange juice is, of course, the benchmark. If you ever taste Minute Maid back-to-back with fresh-squeezed, well, you probably won't be buying Minute Maid again any time soon. It just doesn't even taste like oranges. There are a few brands available (the expensive ones, of course) that do come close enough to actually taste like oranges, but when the mass-market product falls that far down in quality, you can't help but wonder how anyone still wants to buy it.
- qup 6mo agoI haven't had minute maid in a long time, but I enjoy Simply, and Sam's club house brand is pretty good as well. Nothing like a fresh Florida orange, though. I used to know a secret tree in a public preserve that had the best oranges known to man. I might drive down this winter and see if it's still there.
- dcrazy 6mo agoIt may surprise you to learn that Simply Beverages is owned by Coca-Cola, who also own Minute Maid. Simply is definitely the superior of their product lines.
- somat 6mo agoThe process to make never concentrated orange juice logistically viable involves removing all the oxygen from the juice so it stores well. Now you can take a seasonal product like oranges and sell the juice the entire year around. Unfortunately removing the oxygen also removes most of the flavor. so what the bottlers do is add an engineered "flavor package" when they bottle the juice to add the flavor back. I am halfway convinced that flavor wise frozen concentrated orange juice is "closer to the tree" than the "never concentrated" stuff. Nothing on fresh squeezed. But that is the price we pay to have a non-seasonal product.
- chrisco255 6mo agoIs it really non-seasonal any longer now that there are reliable international markets in southern hemisphere to support?
- pixl97 6mo agoI mean, they don't get teleported to the point of sale so most of the rules still apply to long distance shipping.
- wombatpm 6mo agoAs a chemical engineer we study the process for making frozen concentrate orange juice (FCOJ). IIRC you feed the juice into low pressure flash distillation that splits off most of the water. Problem is that many of the volatile compounds go out the top as well, and the resulting concentrate is blah. So you feed back in about 10% raw juice, pack the sludge in cans and freeze em. The fun part was trying to find good estimates for viscosity for the two phase orange sludge in order to properly size the piping and pumps. Treating food products like chemical production is its own weird sub-specialty.
- BoneShard 6mo agoIt was a sad day for me when I realized that a glass of orange juice(or any juice in general) isn't much better for your health than a can of soda and probably even worse than diet/zero coke.
- Noumenon72 6mo agoI love cutting grapefruit in half and digging out chunks because at the end you get to drink grapefruit juice the way it was intended, as a reward for eating grapefruit.
- pfannkuchen 6mo agoDo you eat the seeds and poop them out somewhere nice? I think that’s what the grapefruit intended.
- thatguy0900 6mo agoYou could make the argument that the grapefruit succeeded in its intention already, by being so good that humanity tends and manages whole groves of grapefruit trees
- dylan604 6mo agoNo that's silly. Everyone knows that when you eat a seed like that, the plant grows in your belly.
- 6mo ago
- fuzzfactor 6mo agoLooks like premature collapse of a monoculture due to excess stress, much of it a result of human effort.
- nerdsniper 6mo agoI don't think monoculture is relevant for once; the bacteria affects all citrus trees: oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, etc.
- fuzzfactor 6mo agoYeah, not just one or two susceptible varieties. But when you have nothing but the perfect host for the infection, in incredibly massive proportions as far as the eye can see, a little bacteria goes a long way. Which can be even worse :(
- cratermoon 6mo agoBut those are all the same plant - hybridized Citrus.
- fuzzfactor 6mo agoAre you saying it looks like a "monoculture" to you too? Maybe there's not really accurate terminology for this. Either way we do have to allow more often for the occasional passerby who is fully convinced that adding all that tonnage of glyphosate for so many recent years was a supernatural event, and not the result of any human initiative :\ On top of all that natural disaster, it wouldn't take as much of a straw to break the camel's back. Or the other way around; on top of all the industrial excess, the same natural disaster can have a more devastating effect. Or maybe it's not thought to be premature at all, but long overdue. If somebody was thinking that though, you figure they would leave a comment to that effect.
- chrisco255 6mo agoIt's not monoculture, it's Florida's climate being the perfect environment for the psyllid that causes the disease. California's drier, less humid climate has been more resilient to the bug.
- HardwareLust 6mo agoIt's not who killed it, it's what killed it and the answer is greed.
- nerdsniper 6mo agoFor anyone not aware, the most proximate cause of the disappearance of "Florida Orange Juice™ " is the Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus bacteria. Monoculture is often blamed, but the bacteria affects all citrus trees - oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, etc.
- cratermoon 6mo agoThose are all the same plant. Hybrids of Citrus. A monoculture.
- nerdsniper 6mo agoIn the past, "monoculture" was used to describe things like "one particular variety of banana"[0] - e.g. the Gros Michel banana fell to fungus and was replaced by the Cavendish banana, which was not susceptible to the same fungus but is now also falling to a similar fungus, and will be replaced by another banana variety. In fact, they're not just the same species but closely related cultivars - both part of the AAA banana cultivar group (triploid cultivars of Musa acuminata). The article in Time Magazine puts it succinctly: > There’s a name for this situation: monoculture, the practice of fostering just one variety of something. In the case of bananas (and many other crops, plants, decorative trees, etc), a diversity of varieties would have minimized the spread and impact of pathogens, while providing a more diverse selection of nutritional content and flavor for consumers. But that doesn't seem to be the case for citrus trees. I don't think that "monoculture", as it has been used or the past 50+ years, is the appropriate concept to apply to this citrus greening. Perhaps we could criticize something else - like tree density? Or perhaps monoculture is the problem, but in a much broader sense - maybe a grove with 10% citrus trees, 10% corn, 10% soybeans, 10% berries, 10% apple trees, etc...would create a biome that was hostile to the citrus greening bacteria in such a way that it couldn't thrive and spread. We have no data to support that hypothesis at this time though. 0: "What We Can Learn From the Near-Death of the Banana" https://time.com/5730790/banana-panama-disease/ https://time.com/5730790/banana-panama-disease/
- pjc50 6mo agoThis reminds me of the collapse of the Gros Michel banana variety, also due to disease. Near-100% loss of a food crop, even a luxury one, is an alarming thing to see though. (I was wondering if climate change would be mentioned, but that doesn't seem to be critical there yet. Starting to be noticed in European grape terroir.)
- HugoTea 6mo agoThey mention it as a critical factor, the disease is spread by insects, which is spread by hurricanes. The areas they grow the oranges never used to get hurricanes. > Hurricanes turned out to be a vector for spreading the little winged bug. The wind carried the psyllid all over the state, dropping it off in hundreds of thousands of acres of groves. > It was the perfect storm. And then, of course, there were the actual perfect storms, the high-caliber hurricanes that, before climate change, didn’t come to the Ridge: Irma, Ian, Milton, massive cells, all direct hits on the groves.
- treis 6mo agoDo you really believe parts of Florida never got hurricanes until recently?
- zdragnar 6mo agoTo be charitable, they merely pointed out what the article said, even if it is obviously, objectively false.
- jibal 6mo agoIt's not objectively false, people just can't read. > the high-caliber hurricanes that, before climate change, didn’t come to the Ridge
- caminante 6mo agoYou're making the parent's point. These recent storms only got to Cat4. Similar storms hit the aforementioned areas in 2004-05 including Cat4. How do these revelations not contradict the article?
- cratermoon 6mo agoSugarcane and pineapple used to be the biggest agricultural products in Hawaii. Now they're gone.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoWhat caused this in Hawaii?
- MrRadar 6mo agoIIRC for sugar it's because of cheaper cane sugar substitutes (corn syrup and sugar beets) out-competing the cane sugar grown in Hawaii.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoSo, market conditions then, and not some kind of blight or parasite? Wasn't sure.
- scheme271 6mo agoSugarcane was due to cheaper sources. Pineapples I think was due to economic factors as well. Basically, one of the most isolated population centers in the world adds a lot of cost due to shipping things in and out and being a US state imposes means that labor isn't going to be dirt cheap.
- jnsaff2 6mo agoAlso Jones Act: ships from Asia can't pick up cargo from Hawaii on the way and drop it in mainland US. This means that shipping between Hawaii and mainland is much more expensive then it needs to be.
- Spooky23 6mo agoThe Jones act has to be one of the most destructive stupid laws that we have.
- CobrastanJorji 6mo agoFascinating story. I wonder how much the earlier pesticides contributed to the problem. The story mentions it as a thing that was passing, and it makes me curious what would have happened without the pesticides. I'm also curious whether the bugs would survive if you cut down every orange tree in Florida, waited a couple of years, and then planted new groves.
- throw0101d 6mo agoMeta: giving oranges as gifts at Christmas was a bit of a thing in the past when they used to be much more rare during winter: from Valencia/Ivrea for Europeans, and California/Florida in the US. * https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-we-should-bring-back-tradition-christmas-orange-180971101/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-we-should-br... In the US the Interstate system helped reduce shipping and logistic costs across state lines, and so oranges became more prevalent and less 'special' post-WW2.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoThere are (were?) also dedicated "juice trains" running from Florida to various destinations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_Train
- chrisco255 6mo agoAlso the passenger train immortalized by Johnny Cash's "Orange Blossom Special": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWz5NzY3Zck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWz5NzY3Zck
- fuzzfactor 6mo ago"Rouse and Wise wrote the Orange Blossom Special song as a fiddle tune." With the characteristic doppler effect of a rapidly passing train horn simulated by the fiddle player. That Orange Blossom Special, doesn't run through Waldo any more.
- ljm 6mo agoTangerines (or satsumas) over Christmas were a treat in the north of England when I was a kid. Granny Smith and Pink Lady were also considered treats when it came to apples, compared to the usual golden delicious or braeburn.
- jrumbut 6mo agoThey also had a wild system for growing citrus fruit in trenches in the USSR. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-cultivating-subtropical-plants-in-freezing-temperatures/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-cul... I've always wanted to try it in my own cold environment.
- morninglight 6mo agoAnita Bryant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant#/media/File:Anita_Bryant_Sucks_Oranges_button.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant#/media/File:Anita...
- lightedman 6mo agoThe Florida Orange was NEVER the Florida Orange to begin with. Of note from the story: "...because it came from China, where oranges also came from in the first place." Technically yes but also no, what we have for the modern navel orange came from a mutation that happened in Brazil in the 1800s - 200 years after its introduction from China. The parent trees for literally the entire navel orange (aka Florida aka Sunkist orange) industry are in Riverside, CA, I see them every day driving to work. The now-deceased Queen of England used to get two boxes of oranges from those very trees every year.
- ramesh31 6mo agoMakes the disease even more confounding, as one would assume that orange trees evolved alongside it. Normally invasives are destructive because the species has never seen it before.
- khuey 6mo agoCitrus greening wasn't documented in Asia until the early 1900s so it's possible they didn't evolve alongside it.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoFWIW, "navel" oranges are grown for eating, not for juice. People prefer them because they are easy to peel and they don't have seeds. Juice oranges have a tougher, thinner rind that doesn't peel easily, and they have seeds. But they have better taste and more juice than navel oranges.
- defterGoose 6mo agoI'll pick a bone on the flavor comment because a good Washington Navel is probably one of the best tasting oranges in existence.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoI guess it might depend on the variety then. I've had navel oranges that were almost like damp cellulose to eat. Very little juice or flavor.
- markbnj 6mo agoThe John McPhee article that the author references was expanded into a book, and it's a great read for anyone that finds this story interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Oranges-John-McPhee-ebook/dp/B005E8AN0A https://www.amazon.com/Oranges-John-McPhee-ebook/dp/B005E8AN...
- floodfx 6mo agoSeconded. Interesting read.
- jhbadger 6mo agoJohn McPhee is a great underrated non-fiction author, up there with the late Tracy Kidder. I particularly like McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy" about the physicist Theodore B. Taylor.
- globnomulous 6mo agoHe may have little name recognition, but he's considered, at a minimum, one of the most important, influential, masterful nonfiction writers of his generation.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- firesteelrain 6mo agoMy great uncle got busted for peyote during the Canker Wars because Florida was going around to all the known growers and greenhouses looking for canker. Charges were dropped because they didn’t have a warrant. He also grew legitimate plants.
- pstuart 6mo agoHe sounds like a great uncle!
- DANmode 6mo agoPotentially.
- firesteelrain 6mo agoHe fought in WW2 but by the time I knew him his mind was gone mostly due to PTSD. I miss my great aunt and uncle
- eth0up 6mo agoI just want to proudly, but also sadly, boast that Polk county once produced more oranges than the entire state of California. Florida was a beautiful place not long ago, but a very peculiar and aggressively anti indigenous development is redefining it daily. Things have become so strange that squalid retention ponds qualify as wetland restoration. I could rant for a while, but won't. Sarasota once produced more celery than possibly all states combined, and that helped us get through the Depression locally. But we sure did grow some oranges, and how wonderful the scent of orange blossoms are. It's something to behold.
- lovich 6mo agoFlorida is a democracy. Florida voted for leaders who ignore these problems because of “woke”. Floridians deserve the results. I will grant clemency for anyone who was born there and isn’t wealthy enough to move out. I will grant 10x hate for anyone who moved there for the politics and complains about the results.
- eth0up 6mo agoBorn here. And for me, the government is the pine flats, the oaks and palmetto scrubs, the springs, the sea, the spirit of the Timucua, sandhill cranes, thunderstorms. If Billy Bowlegs or Geronimo come back, I'll vote for them. I'd consider voting for someone who actually respected this place, but I'm not sure anyone does. I've been to nearly every state, and some other lands, but there's no place finer. I'm pure Florida man.
- fuzzfactor 6mo agoYup, the things that outlast any government are what means the most. I'm a native too and I'll add a data point. It's people who moved to Florida that voted the destructive operators into leadership positions, once they outnumbered the natives.
- eth0up 6mo agoWe all know this too well. The last 30 years has been similar to watching my closest friend be ravaged by terminal illness. It hurts, bad. All I can do is aim for a small farm (proximal to protected forest) someday, if I can ever afford so. What I can say is that the terrain is being pushed too far and closer to a breaking point than most realize. One anomalous back-to-back hurricane series could reveal this rather harshly. Florida is wetlands, not a shopping center. We can't just expect the bays to swallow everything. Someday we could have airboat options for visiting Disney. Pestilence, contamination from flooding, excessive heat on an isolated power island, mucho etc - yeah, we could realize soon.
- mgleason_3 6mo agoI hate to say it, but I wonder if we are better off letting it go. The climate in Florida makes it a constant battle that’s managed by spraying tons of pesticides, fertilizer, fungicides, and antibiotics. It all runs off into the rivers and everglades and pollutes the water system eventually making its way to the ocean polluting it as well. It contributes to a host of serious problems for humans and the ecosystem. The antibiotic resistance alone is absolutely nuts.
- leke 6mo agoI find these stories fascinating. Since it mentioned the orange originally came from China, I wonder if there are varieties that are resistant while still tasting good.
- gertrunde 6mo agoWikipedia suggests that there are no naturally resistant strains, although there is some genetically modified work ongoing. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_greening_disease#Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_greening_disease#Contro...] More interesting was a suggestion that a more holistic approach may have merit, i.e. improving overall soil/grove health with less intensive methods. [https://citrusindustry.net/2019/04/02/citrus-grower-sees-success-with-cover-crops/ https://citrusindustry.net/2019/04/02/citrus-grower-sees-suc...]
- roysting 6mo agoQuite the irony that a non-native species (oranges) are being decimated by another invasive non-native bacterial disease. I was just talking about the devastation that invasive species and diseases have caused not just in America, even though it’s most acute there in many ways, but also all over the whole planet. I don’t think people really have any understanding for just how decimated the planet is due to invasive species, arguably including the rapacious types of humans were have. Orange are just a tiny little example of that; forest the farms devastated the natural ecosystems, then monoculture and pesticides destroyed native species, and now a disease from the old country is devastating the invasive oranges. Left behind will be what, more luxury condos?
- wazoox 6mo agoThe whole article insists on the insect, but the conclusion is very different: What did he think of all this, I asked him. What happened to the Florida orange? “I think they killed it themselves, with chemicals. That’s a fact,” Gunther said. In my time in Florida, I’d found a more complicated story, but down here, everyone had their theories, their longing for citrus nirvana, and their anger at the loss. “They sprayed so much chemicals, the damn grass don’t even grow here anymore—you can quote me,” Gunther said. “I knew it back in 1990. I said, ‘They’re sprayin’ so much chemicals it’s gonna be the end.’ And it’s the end.”