Grapefruit Market Update

The American citrus industry has experienced volatile changes throughout its nearly 200-year history. From freezes to canker to hurricanes and now greening, it has been tested and weakened, but nonetheless withstood though in diminished numbers. Much analysis and attention has been centered on total acreage, or number of trees, or overall boxes (all of which is important) but in aggregating the industry as a whole what can be missed is how individual crops within citrus have weathered storms and exist in the present. Specifically, for this article: what is going on in with grapefruit? While its exact origins in the Americas are a topic of debate, one popular opinion is that a French Count brought the grapefruit to Tampa Bay, and in its early days shared nomenclature popularly with its relative: the pomelo. After the Second World War spurred the invention of frozen concentrated juice, grapefruit often sat in dispensers directly next to orange and near apple in America’s grade school lunchrooms, college cafeterias, and across motel “continental” breakfast buffets. Over the past thirty years, however, as the nation’s (and especially Florida’s) citrus industry has fended off nature’s detractors, grapefruit has borne a heavy burden, resulting in a relative level of production decline greater than in the orange complex.

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