Florida's orange juice industry is in dire straits and officials are fighting to save it from collapse

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates growers will only fill 12.9 million boxes of oranges this season. For comparison, the 2021 to 2022 season, which was considered disappointing, saw growers fill 41.2 million boxes. Roughly 20 years ago, the average output for the state was in the neighborhood of 200 million boxes of oranges.

A glimmer of hope via technology

Now, as fields sit dormant, orange growers are hopeful that a pair of new technological solutions will kickstart the industry back to life. One uses Crispr gene editing to create trees that are resistant to disease (the EPA approved commercial use of the technology in April), while the other injects a harmless virus into trees to aid them in resisting citrus greening.

To kickstart a hoped-for revival in citrus production, Florida is subsidizing growers who buy these resistant trees. The state has earmarked $330 million over two years for the program.

The turnaround won’t be a quick one, however. Growers won’t plant the trees until this spring. And then it will be another two years before they begin to bear fruit, assuming the technological solutions work.

That’s going to make it harder for growers to retain their staff, which have been drifting away for years. That, along with the problems with climate, tariffs and the industry’s other problems have made many in the industry pessimistic.

“It’s been a dumpster fire of a year,” Rick Dantzler, chief operating officer of the Citrus Research and Development Foundation said at the 2026 Florida Citrus Show in March.