Orange Juice Concentrate: Greening Makes Futures Evergreen

Frozen Orange Juice Concentrate futures keep climbing almost uninterruptedly for the 5th month. Today on CBOT the entire spectrum of FCOJ futures rose again, to the tune of $3.55–5.80 per day, which represents the strongest momentum across all commodities groups. Orange juice trading has become popular globally, and trading volumes continue to increase. In orange juice options trading, the underlying asset is one FCOJ-A futures contract worth 15,000 pounds of concentrated solidified orange juice.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday forecast U.S. orange production in 2022-2023 at 62.25 million boxes (2.57 million tons), an 86-year low and a 23% YoY decline. That's less than 20% of record U.S. production in 1997-1998. One of the reasons – more and more recorded instances of common citrus fruit disease called greening.

This year, the U.S. orange harvest shows more signs of deterioration and is expected to be the smallest since 1937. Production has generally declined since its peak 25 years ago, although losses in the typical top producing state of Florida this year have been very large.

This has spurred imports of oranges and orange juice, although the U.S. remains a net exporter of fresh citrus fruit. While production losses have severely weakened the U.S.'s position on world markets, the U.S. domestic demand for orange juice, a breakfast staple, remained relatively stable.