SAO PAULO -- Brazil, the world's largest orange-juice exporter, is producing oranges with excessive levels of water for a second season and there's no end to the problem in sight.
The underlying cause is citrus greening disease, which has forced farmers to change how and where they grow the fruit. Brazilian companies crushed an average of 288.93 boxes of oranges to produce 1 ton of juice in the season that started in July, while the historical average is 250 boxes, CitrusBR said in a statement on Monday.
In comparison, during Brazil's highly productive 2002-03 season, the industry yielded the same amount of juice with only 224 boxes, CitrusBR data showed. There's no sign of any improvement in the next few years, CitrusBR Executive Director Ibiapaba Netto said by phone.
"We believe that 275 boxes per ton will be the new average from now," Netto said.
Citrus greening, which causes fruit to shrivel or drop early from trees, appeared in Brazil in 2004. It has forced farmers to eradicate millions of trees to keep the bacteria from spreading and prompted the relocation of orange production to other parts of Sao Paulo state, the country's main growing area.
"Fruit is being cultivated in colder areas or in places that require irrigation," Juliano Ayres, a manager at industry foundation Fundecitrus, said in a telephone interview. "It has resulted in bigger fruit, though, with more water inside."