# Where do oranges come from?

Source: Commodity Origins, https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/oranges/ — data JSON: https://commodityorigins.com/data/commodities/oranges.json — license CC BY 4.0 (upstream data keeps its license; see Sources below).

Oranges come mainly from Brazil, which produced 15.7 million tonnes in 2024, 23% of the world's 67.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China (11%), Mexico (7.2%) and Egypt (6.3%) follow; the top five together supply 54%. The biggest exporter of fresh oranges (HS 080510) is Spain (22% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Mediterranean exporters, CIF France, was $0.77/kg in August 2026, down 40% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Sweet oranges need a long warm season, enough winter chill to color the skin and almost no hard frost, which puts them in a narrow subtropical band either side of the tropics; where within that band a country sits decides whether it grows fruit for the crate or fruit for the extractor, because juice needs volume and cheap land while fresh fruit needs looks and a short trip to market.

*Citrus fruit sold fresh or squeezed into juice concentrate; the juice and fresh markets barely overlap.* Also called: orange, sweet orange, citrus, orange juice, valencia.

## Where do oranges come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | 15.7 million | 23% |
| 2 | China | 7.6 million | 11% |
| 3 | Mexico | 4.8 million | 7.2% |
| 4 | Egypt | 4.2 million | 6.3% |
| 5 | India | 3.9 million | 5.7% |
| 6 | Spain | 2.9 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | Indonesia | 2.6 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | United States | 2.5 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Iran | 2.2 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Vietnam | 1.9 million | 2.9% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 28% |
| | World | 67.1 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

The sweet orange, Citrus sinensis, is a subtropical rather than a tropical crop. It wants a long warm growing season, generous water, and a cool but frost-free winter: cold nights below about 13 degrees Celsius break down the chlorophyll in the peel and turn it orange, which is why fruit grown in the true tropics stays green even when it is ripe and sweet. A few hours below about minus two degrees will freeze the juice inside the fruit and split the segments, and a hard freeze kills wood. That narrow tolerance is why the world's orange belt runs through southern Brazil, the Mediterranean, Florida and California, South Africa, and the subtropical fringes of China and India.

In 2024 Brazil grew 15.7 million tonnes, 23% of the world's 67.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China followed with 11%, then Mexico (7.2%), Egypt (6.3%) and India (5.7%). The crucial distinction is not between big and small producers but between fruit grown to be squeezed and fruit grown to be eaten. Brazil's citrus belt in São Paulo and Minas Gerais is an industrial juice landscape: large blocks of Valencia and Pera oranges planted for yield and soluble solids, harvested into bulk trailers and delivered to extraction plants. Spain, Egypt, South Africa, Morocco and Turkey grow for the crate, where size, skin finish, seedlessness and shelf life determine the price.

The United States sits in both camps and has been shrinking in each. United States produced 2.5 million tonnes in 2024, 3.7% of the world total, contracting at -8.6% a year over the previous decade, the sharpest decline of any large producer (FAOSTAT). Florida grows almost entirely for juice and has been reduced by citrus greening disease and by hurricanes; California grows navels for the fresh market and has been comparatively insulated.

World output is flat and has been for a decade: production changed -0% over the ten years to 2024, -2% over five and -3% over the last year (FAOSTAT). Underneath that flat total the map is redrawing itself. Egypt grew at +3% a year and Vietnam at +12.5%, while Brazil declined at -0.8% and Spain at -1.8%. 135 countries reported a crop, and everything outside the top ten came to 28%.


## Who exports and imports oranges?

Brazil grows for juice and ships concentrate, not fruit; Spain, Egypt and South Africa supply the fresh trade.

### Exporters of citrus fruit, fresh or dried (HS 0805), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spain | $3.6 billion | 22% |
| 2 | South Africa | $2.1 billion | 13% |
| 3 | China | $1.5 billion | 9.1% |
| 4 | Egypt | $1.4 billion | 8.1% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.1 billion | 6.7% |
| 6 | Mexico | $933.8 million | 5.5% |
| 7 | United States | $852 million | 5.1% |
| 8 | Morocco | $616 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $473.1 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Australia | $459.5 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Chile | $404.1 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Greece | $357.5 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Italy | $328.8 million | 2% |
| 14 | Peru | $260 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Germany | $240.1 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of citrus fruit, fresh or dried (HS 0805), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.8 billion | 11% |
| 2 | Germany | $1.4 billion | 8.4% |
| 3 | France | $1.1 billion | 6.6% |
| 4 | Russia | $1.1 billion | 6.3% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $1.1 billion | 6.2% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $795 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | Canada | $661 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | Poland | $450.8 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | China | $397.7 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Vietnam | $389.7 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Italy | $326.7 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Saudi Arabia | $319.9 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | United Arab Emirates | $307.5 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | South Korea | $307 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Iraq | $282.1 million | 1.7% |

### Exporters of oranges, fresh or dried (HS 080510), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spain | $1.2 billion | 22% |
| 2 | Egypt | $1 billion | 18% |
| 3 | South Africa | $843.9 million | 15% |
| 4 | United States | $532.7 million | 9.7% |
| 5 | Australia | $258.7 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Greece | $203.6 million | 3.7% |
| 7 | China | $185.4 million | 3.4% |
| 8 | Italy | $148.7 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $146.6 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $136.5 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Portugal | $115.7 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Chile | $101 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Germany | $71.1 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Hong Kong | $62.9 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Morocco | $61.9 million | 1.1% |

### Importers of oranges, fresh or dried (HS 080510), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $467.5 million | 8.5% |
| 2 | France | $434.2 million | 7.9% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $354.6 million | 6.5% |
| 4 | Russia | $268.5 million | 4.9% |
| 5 | United States | $234.3 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | China | $203.5 million | 3.7% |
| 7 | South Korea | $200.2 million | 3.6% |
| 8 | Canada | $199.6 million | 3.6% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $192.5 million | 3.5% |
| 10 | Spain | $167.5 million | 3% |
| 11 | Saudi Arabia | $167.2 million | 3% |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | $150.4 million | 2.7% |
| 13 | Hong Kong | $148.2 million | 2.7% |
| 14 | Italy | $119.1 million | 2.2% |
| 15 | Japan | $114.9 million | 2.1% |

### Exporters of fruit juices, including orange juice (HS 2009), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $3.5 billion | 17% |
| 2 | Spain | $1.4 billion | 6.9% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $1.4 billion | 6.7% |
| 4 | China | $981.4 million | 4.8% |
| 5 | Germany | $952.6 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Thailand | $925.3 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | Poland | $880.9 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | Mexico | $842.4 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $775 million | 3.8% |
| 10 | United States | $763.4 million | 3.8% |
| 11 | Italy | $736.8 million | 3.6% |
| 12 | Austria | $511.6 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | South Africa | $451 million | 2.2% |
| 14 | Israel | $421.2 million | 2.1% |
| 15 | Vietnam | $412.5 million | 2% |

### Importers of fruit juices, including orange juice (HS 2009), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $4.2 billion | 21% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $2.1 billion | 10% |
| 3 | Germany | $1.4 billion | 6.7% |
| 4 | France | $1 billion | 5% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $920.7 million | 4.5% |
| 6 | Belgium | $869.2 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | China | $862.4 million | 4.2% |
| 8 | Japan | $814.6 million | 4% |
| 9 | Canada | $621.4 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | Austria | $444.4 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Poland | $436 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Spain | $402.6 million | 2% |
| 13 | Italy | $355.7 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $315 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Ireland | $304.9 million | 1.5% |

Source: CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601).

Oranges cross borders in two entirely separate trades that share almost no participants. Fresh fruit (HS 080510) was a $5.5 billion trade in 2024, led by Spain with 22% of export value, then Egypt (18%), South Africa (15%) and United States (9.7%) (CEPII BACI). Spain supplies northern Europe through the winter by road, Egypt has grown into the largest low-cost supplier of the same market, and South Africa and Australia fill the northern hemisphere's summer gap with counter-seasonal fruit. Notably absent from the top of that table is Brazil, the largest producer in the world, which exports 22% of nothing like its share of production because its oranges are squeezed before they leave the country.

The juice trade tells the other half of the story. Fruit juices (HS 2009) were worth $20.3 billion in 2024, and the largest exporter was Brazil with 17%, ahead of Spain and Netherlands (CEPII BACI); the largest importer was United States with 21%, followed by Netherlands. Brazil ships concentrate and not-from-concentrate juice in refrigerated bulk tankers to dedicated terminals, which is a different logistics business from putting fruit in a box. On the fresh side the buyers are European: Germany took 8.5% of the world's $5.5 billion of fresh orange imports in 2024, ahead of France (7.9%) and Netherlands (6.5%), with the Netherlands acting as a re-export hub rather than a final market.


## What do oranges cost?

- Mediterranean exporters, CIF France: $0.77/kg in August 2026; 12-month change -40%; 10-year change -20%; all-time high $2.7/kg in December 2024; real high (2024 US$) $2.67/kg in December 2024 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

Prices are monthly benchmark averages that lag the market; not investment advice.

### How they are priced

There are two prices for an orange and they move independently. Fresh fruit is priced by negotiation between exporters, importers and supermarket buyers, week by week, on the basis of variety, size count, grade and origin. There is no exchange for it. The World Bank series used on this page, Mediterranean exporters, CIF France, is a fresh-fruit quotation: the cost, insurance and freight value of fruit from Mediterranean exporters landed in France. It was $0.77/kg in August 2026, down 40% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its record was $2.7/kg in December 2024, which in inflation-adjusted terms was also close to the real high of $2.67/kg in December 2024; the lowest monthly value since the series began in 1960 was $0.07/kg in February 1966. Over ten years it has changed -20%.

Juice is priced on a futures exchange. The FCOJ-A contract trades on ICE Futures US and covers 15,000 pounds of orange juice solids, quoted in cents and hundredths of a cent per pound, deliverable as United States Grade A concentrate of not less than 62.5 degrees Brix into exchange-licensed warehouses in Florida, New Jersey and Delaware. That contract is the reference for the concentrate trade, and because deliverable stocks are small and the crop is concentrated in two regions, it is one of the most volatile agricultural futures markets in existence. Not-from-concentrate juice, which is now the larger product by value in several markets, is sold on supply contracts priced with reference to the futures market but not settled against it.

Three ambiguities follow from all this. First, the series charted here is fresh fruit landed in Europe and says nothing directly about juice; a Florida crop failure can send FCOJ futures to records while Mediterranean fresh fruit is cheap. Second, CIF means the quote includes freight and insurance to the destination, so it is not comparable with an FOB price at origin or with what a grower receives. Third, the production table counts all oranges regardless of destination, so a country's tonnes say nothing about whether that fruit ever appeared in a shop.


## What moves the price of oranges?

### Citrus greening (huanglongbing)

HLB is a bacterial disease spread by the Asian citrus psyllid that starves the tree by blocking its phloem, producing small, lopsided, bitter fruit that drops early. There is no cure and infected trees decline over several years. It reached Florida in 2005 and California by 2012 and is established in Brazil's citrus belt, and it has cut yields, raised the cost of production through spray and nutrition programs, and shortened the productive life of a grove from decades to years.

### Brazil's juice crop and inventory

Brazil supplies the bulk of internationally traded orange juice, so the size of its São Paulo crop and the concentrate stocks held by its processors set the world juice price. Stocks act as the buffer: when carry-in inventory is comfortable, a poor crop barely registers, and when inventory is thin, the same crop shortfall sends the futures market sharply higher. Growers and processors survey the crop through the season, and each revision moves the contract.

### Frost and hurricanes in Florida

Florida's groves sit at the cold edge of the crop's range and in a hurricane track. A hard freeze splits fruit and kills wood, and the historic freezes of the 1890s and 1980s permanently moved the industry south. Wind is now the larger threat: Hurricane Ian in September 2022 stripped fruit from trees across the producing counties and cut the following season's output sharply, on top of the long decline caused by greening.

### Counter-seasonal supply

The northern hemisphere harvests from roughly November to May and the southern hemisphere from May to October, so the fresh market runs on two half-year supply cycles that hand over to each other. South African, Australian, Argentine and Chilean fruit sets the summer price in Europe and North America; Spanish, Egyptian, Moroccan and Turkish fruit sets the winter price. A poor season in one hemisphere leaves a gap the other cannot fill because the fruit is not on the trees yet.

### Water and drought in the Mediterranean

Spanish, Egyptian and Moroccan citrus is irrigated, so water allocation is a production input in the same way fertilizer is. Drought in the Valencian and Andalusian growing regions reduces fruit size before it reduces tonnes, and size is what determines the price a crate fetches. Restrictions on abstraction, and the cost of pumping when energy is expensive, feed straight into the cost of production and into which groves are worth keeping.

### Phytosanitary rules and market access

Fresh citrus moves under strict pest rules, and a change in them can close a market overnight. European requirements on false codling moth and citrus black spot for South African fruit, cold-treatment protocols for imports into some Asian markets, and quarantine responses to greening detections all shift trade flows without changing how much fruit exists. Compliance costs are borne at the packhouse and can make a distant market uneconomic for a given season.

### The fresh-versus-juice allocation

Most oranges could in principle go either way, and the grower's decision is economic. When fresh prices are strong, more fruit is picked carefully, sized and packed, and less reaches the extractor; when fresh prices are weak or the fruit is blemished, it is diverted to juice at a much lower price. This gives juice a floor and fresh a ceiling, and it means the two markets are linked at the margin even though their price series often diverge.

### Currency and grower economics

Brazilian growers earn dollars for juice and pay costs in reais, so a weaker real improves their margin and encourages replanting even when the dollar price is unchanged. Spanish and Egyptian exporters face the same mechanism against the euro and the pound. Because a citrus tree takes several years to come into bearing, currency-driven planting decisions show up in supply three to five years later, which is one source of the long cycles in this market.

## How are oranges produced?

An orange tree is two plants. The fruiting variety is budded onto a rootstock chosen for soil type, disease tolerance and vigor, and the combination determines yield, fruit size and how long the grove lasts. A new planting takes three to five years to bear a commercial crop and can then produce for decades, which makes citrus a capital investment rather than an annual decision. The tree flowers in spring, sets far more fruit than it can carry and sheds most of it, and the remainder takes seven to fourteen months to mature depending on variety.

Variety decides destination. Navel oranges are seedless, easy to peel and early, and their juice turns bitter within hours because of limonin, so they are grown for the fresh market. Valencia is later, seedy, high in juice and holds on the tree, which makes it the classic processing orange; Brazil's Pera and Hamlin play the same role. Blood oranges need cold nights to develop their pigment, which is why they are a Sicilian and Spanish specialty. Fresh fruit is picked by hand into bags and bins to avoid bruising, and in warm autumns it is degreened with a low dose of ethylene in a sealed room to break down the peel's chlorophyll without ripening the flesh further.

The packhouse is where fresh value is made or lost. Fruit is washed, brushed, waxed to slow moisture loss, graded by machine and eye for color and blemish, sized by weight or diameter into standard counts per carton, and packed. Anything that fails goes to the juice plant. Processing is a continuous industrial operation: extractors squeeze fruit between meshing cups that separate juice from peel and seeds in one motion, the juice is finished to remove pulp, pasteurized, and then either evaporated to a concentrate of about 65 degrees Brix and frozen, or chilled and stored as not-from-concentrate juice in refrigerated aseptic tanks under nitrogen.

The by-products are worth more than they look. Peel is pressed and dried into citrus pulp pellets sold as cattle feed, the peel oil is recovered as d-limonene for solvents and flavors, essence oil and aroma recovered during evaporation are added back to restore flavor, and the albedo is a major source of pectin for jams and food thickening. Seasonality is sharp: Brazil harvests from roughly May to January, Florida from October to June, Spain from October to May, and the southern hemisphere fresh season runs from about May to October.


## What are oranges used for?

Oranges are eaten fresh or drunk. The fresh trade takes the fruit with the best appearance and the juice industry takes the rest, plus everything grown specifically for processing. Within juice there are two products: frozen concentrated orange juice, which is evaporated, frozen, shipped and reconstituted with water near the consumer, and not-from-concentrate juice, which is pasteurized and shipped chilled in bulk at far greater cost per liter. The relative share of the two has shifted toward not-from-concentrate in high-income markets, which changes shipping economics because water is being moved rather than removed.

Beyond the fruit itself, citrus supports a cluster of ingredient industries: pectin from the peel for jams and confectionery, d-limonene as a solvent and fragrance, citrus essential oils for flavoring and cleaning products, and dried citrus pulp pellets fed to dairy cattle. Marmalade uses bitter Seville oranges, a small and distinct trade. None of these approaches the scale of fresh and juice consumption, but they are the reason a processing plant can pay for fruit that would otherwise be waste.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The two trades have separate infrastructure end to end. Juice runs on a purpose-built bulk system: Brazilian processors in São Paulo pipe concentrate and chilled juice to terminals at the port of Santos, load it into refrigerated tanker vessels designed for the purpose, and discharge at dedicated terminals in Ghent, Rotterdam, Wilmington in Delaware, and Japan, where it is stored in tank farms and blended before packing. This is a closed system with a handful of participants, and it is why the juice trade shows up in the statistics as a small number of very large flows.

Fresh fruit runs on the ordinary produce chain. Spanish oranges leave Valencia and Andalusia by refrigerated truck and reach German and French supermarkets within days, which is the origin of the CIF France quotation used on this page. Egyptian fruit ships in reefer containers from Alexandria and Damietta to Europe, Russia and Asia. South African fruit leaves Durban, Cape Town and Gqeberha for Europe and the Middle East during the northern summer, and its transit depends on both reefer container availability and the phytosanitary cold-treatment regime the destination requires.

The chokepoints are biological and infrastructural in about equal measure. The largest is disease: greening is established in the two regions that matter most for juice, and there is no resistant commercial variety, so the supply base is eroding rather than failing suddenly. The second is the concentration of juice processing in a small number of plants and terminals, which means an outage or a labor dispute affects a large share of world supply. The third is port and reefer capacity in the southern hemisphere during a short export window, since fruit that misses its vessel loses a large part of its remaining shelf life. Finally, deliverable stocks behind the FCOJ futures contract are small, so a supply shock can move the paper market violently before it moves the physical one.


## Key companies

- Citrosuco: orange juice processor and shipper, Brazil
- Sucocítrico Cutrale: orange juice processor and grower, Brazil
- Louis Dreyfus Company: juice processor and trader, Netherlands
- Tropicana Brands Group: juice brand owner and packer, United States
- The Coca-Cola Company: juice brand owner (Minute Maid, Simply), United States, listed (KO)
- Anecoop: Spanish grower cooperative and fresh citrus exporter, Spain

## Timeline

- 1873: The Washington navel reaches California. Two greenhouse-grown trees propagated from Bahia, Brazil budwood were sent to Riverside, and the seedless variety they founded became the basis of the California fresh orange industry. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_navel_orange_tree_(Riverside,_California))
- 1894-12: The Great Freeze in Florida. Cold waves in December 1894 and February 1895 cut Florida production from about six million boxes to 100,000 and pushed the industry permanently south into warmer counties. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Freeze)
- 1945: Frozen concentrated orange juice is invented. The cutback process, which evaporates juice under vacuum and adds fresh juice back to restore flavor, made juice storable and shippable and turned oranges into an industrial commodity. (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Trends_in_U.S._Agriculture/Frozen_Orange_Juice/index.php)
- 1948: The FCOJ patent is assigned to the US government. Placing the concentrate process in public hands let any processor use it, and the share of Florida oranges going to processing rose from about 40 percent in the late 1940s to nearly 70 percent by the mid-1950s. (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Trends_in_U.S._Agriculture/Frozen_Orange_Juice/index.php)
- 1966: Orange juice futures begin trading in New York. A futures contract gave the juice trade a hedging instrument and a public price, and made frozen concentrate the only form of the orange with an exchange-traded benchmark. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_juice)
- 1985: Options on FCOJ futures are introduced. Options gave processors and growers a way to insure against freeze-driven price spikes without taking a futures position, deepening a market whose volatility comes from weather in two regions. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_juice)
- 1998: The Asian citrus psyllid arrives in Florida. The insect that spreads huanglongbing established itself years before the disease was found, which meant that once the bacterium arrived it had a ready vector across the state. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_production)
- 2005-08: Citrus greening confirmed in Florida. A greening-positive tree was found in Miami-Dade County in August 2005; within three years the disease had spread to most Florida groves and began a long decline in the state's output. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_production)
- 2012-03: Citrus greening reaches California. The disease was confirmed in a single tree on 30 March 2012, putting the main fresh-market orange region of the United States under quarantine and area-wide psyllid control. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_greening_disease)
- 2022-09: Hurricane Ian strikes the Florida citrus belt. The Category 4 landfall on 28 September 2022 stripped fruit from trees and reduced the following season's citrus production by about 41 percent, the largest fall in more than a century. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_production_in_Florida)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most oranges?

Brazil grew 15.7 million tonnes in 2024, 23% of the world's 67.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), ahead of China at 11% and Mexico at 7.2%. Almost all of Brazil's crop is squeezed rather than sold as fruit, so it barely appears in the fresh orange export tables.

### Which country exports the most oranges?

Spain led the fresh orange trade in 2024 with 22% of the world's $5.5 billion in export value, followed by Egypt at 18% and South Africa at 15% (CEPII BACI). Spain supplies northern Europe by road in winter; South Africa fills the northern summer gap with counter-seasonal fruit.

### Which country exports the most orange juice?

Brazil was the largest exporter of fruit juices in 2024 with 17% of a $20.3 billion trade, ahead of Spain at 6.9% (CEPII BACI). The largest importer was United States at 21%. Brazil ships juice in refrigerated bulk tankers to dedicated terminals rather than in cartons.

### How much do oranges cost?

The Mediterranean exporters, CIF France price was $0.77/kg in August 2026, down 40% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is a landed wholesale price for fresh fruit including freight and insurance, not a retail or farm-gate price. The series record was $2.7/kg in December 2024, and over ten years it has changed -20%.

### Why is orange juice so expensive?

Juice is priced separately from fresh fruit, on the ICE FCOJ futures contract, and its supply depends on two regions where citrus greening has cut yields and where hurricanes and frost hit periodically. Florida's crop fell about 41 percent after Hurricane Ian in September 2022. Fresh fruit prices can fall at the same time: the CIF France quotation was -40% over the year to August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### What is citrus greening?

Huanglongbing, or citrus greening, is a bacterial disease spread by the Asian citrus psyllid. It blocks the tree's phloem, producing small, bitter, misshapen fruit that drops early, and there is no cure. It reached Florida in August 2005 and California in March 2012. United States output has since fallen at -8.6% a year to 2.5 million tonnes in 2024 (FAOSTAT).

### Is orange juice traded on an exchange?

Yes, but only the concentrate. The FCOJ-A contract on ICE Futures US covers 15,000 pounds of orange juice solids at not less than 62.5 degrees Brix, quoted in US cents per pound. Fresh oranges have no futures market and are sold by negotiation: the reference series here was $0.77/kg in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### Does the United States still grow oranges?

Yes, but far fewer. United States produced 2.5 million tonnes in 2024, 3.7% of world output, shrinking at -8.6% a year over the previous decade (FAOSTAT). It still exported $532.7 million of fresh oranges in 2024, 9.7% of world export value (CEPII BACI), mostly California navels rather than Florida juice fruit.

### What is the difference between navel and Valencia oranges?

Navels are seedless, early and easy to peel, but their juice turns bitter within hours because of a compound called limonin, so they are grown for eating. Valencias are later, seedier and higher in juice, and hold on the tree, which makes them the standard processing orange. Both are counted in the 67.1 million tonnes the world grew in 2024 (FAOSTAT).

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601), BACI HS22 V202601, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Etalab Open Licence 2.0. https://www.cepii.fr/CEPII/en/bdd_modele/bdd_modele_item.asp?id=37
- World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), 2026-09-02, fetched 6 September 2026. License: CC BY 4.0. https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets

Text last reviewed 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where do oranges come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/oranges/.