By Daniel Munch
For many Americans, a cold, crisp glass of orange juice is a morning ritual. Yet behind that simple pleasure lies a U.S. orange industry fighting formidable challenges like invasive diseases and extreme weather. Now, a small regulatory change may offer some much-needed relief. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed updates to a 60-year-old standard of identity for pasteurized orange juice, lowering the required minimum sugar content (measured in degrees Brix, a standard measure of natural sweetness) from 10.5° to 10.0°. This tweak could deliver significant benefits to U.S. citrus growers, without changing the taste or price for consumers.
Shrinking Orange Harvests, Growing Challenges
The twin blows of Huanglongbing (HLB, or citrus greening disease) and frequent hurricanes have led to sharply lower orange yields and fruit sugar levels. Citrus greening, an incurable disease first detected in Florida in 2005, causes trees to drop fruit prematurely and produce oranges that are smaller and less sweet. As a result, Florida’s orange production has plummeted by about 92% since 2005 – from 150 million boxes to just 12 million expected in 2025. The 2024/25 Florida orange crop is projected to be the smallest since 1930, 33% below last season and a stark reminder of the devastating toll disease and extreme weather have taken on the industry. This collapse has shrunk farmers’ incomes and rippled through local economies. Florida’s citrus sector supported over 32,000 jobs and nearly $7 billion in economic output as of 2021, making its survival critical for rural communities. While Florida’s output has collapsed, California has grown from supplying just 20–30% of U.S. oranges to nearly 80% today, managing modest gains since 2022 even as overall national production remains historically low.
One subtle consequence of HLB disease is a decline in the natural sugar content, known as Brix, which measures the percentage of soluble solids (mostly sugars) in juice. In the 1960s, when FDA first set quality standards for orange juice through what is called a standard of identity, essentially a legal recipe that defines what a product must contain to be sold under a certain name, Florida oranges were high in sugar, averaging about 11.8° Brix. The 1963 standard of identity for pasteurized orange juice (POJ) required at least 10.5% soluble solids in the finished juice. For decades this was not a problem, as Florida was the dominant orange juice supplier and typically met that benchmark. But since 2010, average Brix levels have steadily fallen as HLB infection spread, and hurricanes battered groves. By the 2022–23 season, the average Florida orange tested around 9.7° Brix, below the current legal minimum for pasteurized OJ. In short, changing growing conditions have made it increasingly difficult to meet the minimum requirements under the old rules.
In recent years, meeting the 10.5° Brix standard has often required U.S. processors to blend in imported high-sugar juice or concentrate from countries like Brazil and Mexico. While this keeps products legally compliant, it reduces the share of U.S.-grown fruit in the final product, further shrinking the market presence of domestic oranges at a time when production is already at historic lows. This reliance on foreign inputs not only raises costs for processors but also accelerates the shift in supply and market share toward foreign competitors, making the U.S. more dependent on imports and less competitive globally.
Lowering the Brix standard would reduce the need for these high-Brix imports, helping to slow the widening orange juice trade deficit and retain more value within the domestic supply chain. For some processors, particularly grower-owned cooperatives, avoiding the expense of imported concentrate could mean the difference between operating at a loss or remaining viable to preserve jobs and processing capacity in rural areas.
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