Orange farmers and orange juice producers are sounding the alarm about shortages coming to grocery stores near you.

Between Florida and Brazil, global orange production is way down this year, the lowest orange harvest in almost four decades.

Florida and Brazil are battling greening disease, which is caused by the Asian citrus psyllid, another East Asian import (thanks China). The only way to fight the psyllids is apparently the same way they fight Avian flu (also a Chinese import): all the infected food production must be completely destroyed.

On top of greening disease, a drought during the critical flowering period means oranges harvested this fall (when demand for vitamin C is at its peak) are going to be sold at a premium.

Concentrated orange juice futures are currently trading at about $4.52 per pound.

'This is a crisis,' said Kees Cools, president of the International Fruit and Vegetable Juice Association (IFU). 'We've never seen anything like it, even during the big freezes and big hurricanes.'

The only longer-term option 'without touching the naturalness and image of the product' might be 'to use different species of fruit', Cools said.

In other words, orange juice manufacturers are looking at other fruits like mandarins to fill in the gaps, but that requires some significant infrastructure overhauling to process those fruits.

But even worse, it would also require global and national legislative changes to allow orange juice to contain other fruits.

That would require a legislative change, first in the Codex Alimentarius food standards code established by UN bodies, and then at a national level, such as by the US Food and Drug Administration.

So, in the short term, there's no solution but to pass on the costs to the customer.

That's you and me.

Enjoy your orange juice while you can.

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