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What killed the Florida orange?

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Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#121

Post by jillesvangurp »

tetromino_ wrote: post #64
nerdsniper wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 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.

According to the article, the reason why the bacteria was so quickly fatal for Florida orange trees is that their roots were weakened by a sequence of major hurricanes and by many years of excessive pesticide use.

These are all contributing factors. Mono cultures mean a single problem with pests can rapidly spread. Using pesticides means you wipe out a lot of the local wild life; including any predators that might go after the insects that spread the pests. And if you grow the exact same variety of the same produce, they are all going to be vulnerable to the exact same thing at the exact same time. Using more pesticides just adds to the problem and eventually pests become resistant anyway.

A solution here could be growing a larger variety of produce, using organic farming practices, crop rotation, etc. Pests tend to specialize in specific things and most pests have natural predators. So, if you stop killing those they'll help keep outbreaks in check. And if you rotate crops, you take away the food source for the pests. And if you grown a variety of different things, it won't all get sick at the same time.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#122

Post by jmorenoamor »

MisterTea wrote: post #36
exmadscientist wrote: post #4

The 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 ar…

A local grocery store used to make their own fresh squeezed using a refrigerator sized stainless steel machine that might as well have been a Rube Goldberg machine with its winding metal wire chute full of oranges which led to the squeezing head. That thing was kept right in the aisle next to the refrigerator case they kept the juice in. It was the best orange juice though expensive as it was over 10 bucks a quart wh…

No need for huge and complex machines, this is all you need if you have a grocery shop or a coffee shop: https://www.pepebar.com/c/1956-0_thumb/M%C3%A1quinas%20de%20...

You push the white lever and juice comes out. In grocery shops it's customer operated.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#123

Post by caminante »

acdha wrote: post #103
tgarrett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The areas they grow the oranges never used to get hurricanes. That's not correct: we have good data going back to 1851: https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.htm... Search for "FL": hurricanes have been hitting Florida frequently for the last 175 years.

That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. Climate change is making hurricanes stronger and wetter, so even though they've been a phenomenon for as long as humans have lived there that doesn't mean that the frequency of damaging storms over an area can't change in a way which makes it worse for agriculture. There's an inflation-adju…

OK so the grandparent's comment was clumsy.

Now, I see a slate of historical hurricanes in FL from 2004-05 that hit the Ridge area. This contradicts the article as these weren't baby storms.

The issue is clearly the rise of this blight bacteria that has made the groves less resilient to storms and has weakend production.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#124

Post by stackskipton »

Spooky23 wrote: post #94
jnsaff2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also 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.

The Jones act has to be one of the most destructive stupid laws that we have.

Not really, it makes sense from point of view if you want to have an empire, you need a merchant marine to move things around by sea on ships you control.

Jones Act doesn't accomplish what it's supposed to do but that's mainly because it was weak protectionism. Many other countries just shovel government money into their shipbuilding at rates that would probably make many just as angry.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#125

Post by tgarrett »

acdha wrote: post #103
tgarrett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The areas they grow the oranges never used to get hurricanes. That's not correct: we have good data going back to 1851: https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.htm... Search for "FL": hurricanes have been hitting Florida frequently for the last 175 years.

That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. Climate change is making hurricanes stronger and wetter, so even though they've been a phenomenon for as long as humans have lived there that doesn't mean that the frequency of damaging storms over an area can't change in a way which makes it worse for agriculture. There's an inflation-adju…

> That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level.

This is the conventional wisdom, and it is completely falsified by the actual data that I linked to. I wrote a python script to go process and plot it, and there has been zero increase in Cat 1, 2, 3, or 4 storms hitting the US since 1851 (there are only 4 Cat 5s listed total).

Try it for yourself.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#126

Post by wombatpm »

somat wrote: post #7
exmadscientist wrote: post #4

The 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 ar…

The 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 half…

As 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.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#127

Post by caminante »

slibhb wrote: post #112
acdha wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. Climate change is making hurricanes stronger and wetter, so even though they've been a phenomenon for as long as humans have lived there that doesn't mean that the frequency of damaging storms over an area can't change in a way which makes it worse for agriculture. There's an inflation-adju…

Hurricanes do more dollars in damage because we're richer and there's more capital near the coast. The idea that climate change caused hurricanes which spread insects is not impossible but seems unlikely. I don't think the statistical methods exist to prove it.

Valuations have skyrocketed and insurance premiums are insane.

I love the stories about people in FL self-insuring now because it's cheaper to repair drywall than pay premiums.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#128

Post by lovich »

eth0up wrote: post #109

I 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 cele…

Florida 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.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#129

Post by caminante »

jibal wrote: post #115
zdragnar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be charitable, they merely pointed out what the article said, even if it is obviously, objectively false.

It's not objectively false, people just can't read. > the high-caliber hurricanes that, before climate change, didn’t come to the Ridge

You'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?

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#130

Post by caminante »

tgarrett wrote: post #125
acdha wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. Climate change is making hurricanes stronger and wetter, so even though they've been a phenomenon for as long as humans have lived there that doesn't mean that the frequency of damaging storms over an area can't change in a way which makes it worse for agriculture. There's an inflation-adju…

> That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. This is the conventional wisdom, and it is completely falsified by the actual data that I linked to. I wrote a python script to go process and plot it, and there has been zero increase in Cat 1, 2, 3, or 4 storms hitting the US since 1851 (there are only 4 Cat 5s listed total). Try it for…

As @zdragnar pointed out below, people are talking past each other whether it's claimed in the article v. whether the article is right.

It seems many are jumping to biases about climate change without reviewing the data as you did.

And the article should've been written with more nuance.

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