What killed the Florida orange? • Hacker News Board

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#101

Post by zdragnar » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:02 AM UTC

treis wrote: post #96

HugoTea wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They 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 actua…

Do you really believe parts of Florida never got hurricanes until recently?

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

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#102

Post by jhbadger » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:04 AM UTC

markbnj wrote: post #69

The 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/B005E8AN...

John 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.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#103

Post by acdha » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:13 AM UTC

tgarrett wrote: post #98

HugoTea wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They 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 actua…

>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-adjusted list of weather events which caused the equivalent of a billion dollars or more in damages, and the upward trend is pretty clear — it's like dismissing the impact of the machine gun because people used to have long rifles.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/state-summary/FL

You get a similar problem with saltwater intrusion where, yes, it's never not been a phenomenon but now it's affecting a lot more people than it used to:

https://southeastfloridaclimatecompact.org/initiative/climat...

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#104

Post by traderj0e » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:19 AM UTC

baron816 wrote: post #23

BoneShard wrote: post #6

It 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.

This is what happened to me. I would guzzle orange juice. I couldn’t start a day unless I had a giant glass of it. Then I found out that it was just all sugar and not much else. I don’t think I’ve had a glass of the stuff in over a decade.

They advertise vitamin C, but that's in tons of other things. Even used as a preservative.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#105

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:26 AM UTC

treis wrote: post #96

HugoTea wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They 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 actua…

Do you really believe parts of Florida never got hurricanes until recently?

[deleted]

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#106

Post by ianburrell » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:30 AM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #51

nerdsniper wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 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 b…

Monoculture can also mean just one species.

Citrus isn't one species but hybrids of citrons, mandarins, pomelos in Citrus genus. It isn't like cabbage that produces multiple cultivars. Citrus genus is supposed to be diverse cause they do hybridization in wild.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#107

Post by mcphage » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:35 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #48

ryandrake wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found it pretty scary how some mass-market foods have diverged almost completely from the thing they are actually representing. The weird milky vaguely-citrus flavor of chemical that comes in the box labeled "Orange Juice" is just one of many examples. For another example, go taste a grape and then taste some so-called "grape juice." It's actually mostly apple juice, and doesn't even remotely taste like g…

Dark grape juice is made of concord grapes which are the primary variety which is made into jelly, jam, juice, and in general grape flavored things. They don't taste like grocery store eating grapes, they're a different variety. THEY ARE DELICIOUS when you can find them, one of the things I miss about living in California was the brief season you could get a concord grape on the vine to eat. I have never seen them ou…

Concord grapes are pretty common in season in New York State, and I’m assuming the states nearby.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#108

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:50 AM UTC

therobots927 wrote: post #47

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…

It’s the boiling frog problem. Consumers gradually become used to lower quality. 15 years ago, McDonald’s was good . You knew it was bad for you but it was so good that you just didn’t care and it was a great cheat meal. You could get an Angus Delux meal for $7. https://wealthgang.com/mcdonalds-prices-throughout-the-years... Of course they discontinued the angus burgers that actually used high quality ingredients com…

The Big Arch patty is better than the angus was. Their baseline burgers have always been crap.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#109

Post by eth0up » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:57 AM UTC

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 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.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#110

Post by jrumbut » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 2:09 AM UTC

throw0101d wrote: post #45

Meta: 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-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…

They also had a wild system for growing citrus fruit in trenches in the USSR.

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-cul...

I've always wanted to try it in my own cold environment.