Too Much Water Is Diluting Juice From World's No. 1 Orange Crop
- Citrus crop disease forced country’s fruit groves to relocate
- Second season of watery oranges with no end in sight
Workers inspect oranges for quality at a packing house in the Engenheiro Coelho region of Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Dec. 2, 2016.
Photographer: Patricia Monteiro/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Brazil, the world’s largest orange-juice exporter, is producing oranges with excessive levels of water for a second season and there’s no end to the problem in sight.
The underlying cause is citrus greening disease, which has forced farmers to change how and where they grow the fruit. Brazilian companies crushed 288.93 boxes of oranges to produce 1 ton of juice in the season that started in July, while the historical average is 250 boxes, CitrusBR said in a statement on Monday.