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What killed the Florida orange?

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Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#161

Post by therobots927 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #108
therobots927 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

After the whole debacle with the CEO not wanting to bite into it, I didn’t have high hopes. I’ll have to check it out.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#162

Post by caminante »

acdha wrote: post #156
caminante wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does that contradict the article? It seems like it supports it if those were the events which helped harm the previously-strong citrus industry - those storms are part of what hit at the peak, starting the decline.

Did you not see the article claim that the grove areas hadn't been hit by storms before/as big as some listed in the last decade?

Just not true with their phrasing.

edit:

for clarity, the author referenced 2017+ vintage hurricanes as if nothing of their intensity had hit before: Irma (2017), Ian (2022), Idalia (2023), Helene (2024), and Milton (2024). None of these got beyond cat 4. Meanwhile there were certainly other hurricanes that were cat4 that hit the groves in 2004-05.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#163

Post by lightedman »

SoftTalker wrote: post #116
lightedman wrote: post #67

The 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 Sunk…

FWIW, "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.

"FWIW, "navel" oranges are grown for eating, not for juice."

I'd beg to differ - navel oranges produce the smoother flavor and are what get used in making Tropicana. Always has been that way.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#164

Post by triceratops »

wao0uuno wrote: post #143
orev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The juice is still much less healthy. It’s the act of having your guts extract the nutrients that makes fruit healthy, because it reduces how quickly your body absorbs it. Once you make it into juice (or a smoothie) by mechanically digesting it prior to consumption, you’ve removed the need for that.

You forgot about chewing. Nobody swallows oranges in chunks. You chew and that presses out the juice. Drinking the juice and then eating the pulp is no different although it does sound silly. At that point just eat the damn orange like a normal person.

> Drinking the juice and then eating the pulp is no different although it does sound silly. At that point just eat the damn orange like a normal person.

It's less silly than taking a shot of vodka and eating an orange. Tastier too.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#165

Post by caminante »

HugoTea wrote: post #146
treis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have no idea what Florida's weather patterns are

Yes, people are jumping in because neither did the author, and it seems like that's core to the author's argument.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#166

Post by fuzzfactor »

schlauerfox wrote: post #92
pjc50 wrote: post #15

This 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.)

Or the death of the American Chestnut the generation before, once so common its causually in a Christmas song, now all but gone.

Not to mention the loss of the 5-storey-tall coconut palms in South Florida back in the 1970's to Lethal Yellowing. The last resort treatment for these was tetracycline too but it did not save them. Plus they were not generally cultivated nor a local cash crop.

These things used form a massive canopy or grove naturally in so many places, towering over the homes and undeveloped properties.

Which is why so many old homes had the 3 inch thick white tiles on the roof. When one of the nuts comes down from up there it hits pretty hard, even if it's not a hurricane.

Almost all virtually gone, and what's there now is really all the result of landscaping efforts ever since, using resistant varieties that are quite dwarf by comparison.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#167

Post by Eisenstein »

wombatpm wrote: post #126
somat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 es…

Couldn't they keep the aromatics, as they would be the first to come over, and then add them back?

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#168

Post by eth0up »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #158
eth0up wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Born 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 Flo…

Yup, 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.

We 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.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#169

Post by wombatpm »

Eisenstein wrote: post #167
wombatpm wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 es…

Couldn't they keep the aromatics, as they would be the first to come over, and then add them back?

Those get captured and sold separately.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#170

Post by fnordpiglet »

tgarrett wrote: post #137
fnordpiglet wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obtuse. The assertion was a deviation in the areas of Florida experiencing hurricane penetration. This is a localized effect. You’re discussing the gross effects of an entire nation, in this comment, of an entire state in the prior. However no one is discussing Florida or the US. They’re discussing the orange growing regions of Florida, which is a region that has not historically had hurricanes, but has had t…

So what you are saying is that, yes there has not been an overall increase in hurricanes hitting the US over the last 175 years, but climate change has been specifically and precisely steering the hurricanes towards the orange growing regions of Florida in recent years, and is therefore to blame for the crop failures. You have to diagnose a problem correctly in order to have a chance at solving it.

I’m asserting nothing other than the article asserted the pattern of hurricanes changed to target the orange growing region more often and that you’re using gross geographic data to discuss an orthogonal point. However you make it seem like the assertion is nature intentionally targeting orange groves rather than shifts in patterns implies patterns shifted from where they were to where they were not hitting - this is definitional in the concept of a pattern shift. Your evidence for your assertions are unrelated to that topic of pattern shift, indicating you’ve misunderstood the problem to diagnose.

It’s great you’re bringing data to the table but you’re overstating its validity to the assertion dramatically.

Finally I’d note you’re asserting an analysis you’ve done without providing the data, method, or any reproducibility. So while you might personally feel you’ve done an accurate job, your assertions are citing exclusively yourself, against hidden methods, making it of no more quality than a puff piece article citing research without citation that you’re arguing against.

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