Climate-Smart Orange Juice

Abstract

Our daily glass of orange juice has travelled a long way to the breakfast table. Travel is part of its carbon footprint, but growing the oranges in the first place dominates emissions. Each glass has a total footprint of around 200 grams. In the UK we waste approximately 50,000 tonnes of orange juice each year-reducing household waste and improving the efficiency of water and fertiliser use on farms stand out as ways to cut the carbon footprint of orange juice. Growers in Brazil and the US are battling citrus greening disease and those in Florida have been devastated by frost damage in the past. In the future, climate change is set to bring greater pest and disease risks alongside drought and heat-stress issues. Strategies such as irrigation, soil moisture management and biological pest control all emerge as potentially powerful climate-smart solutions, but for some orange farmers abandoning orange growing altogether may be the only long-term answer.