Recent and ongoing extreme weather conditions are causing problems for Australian orange farmers, and nudie juice is asking for people’s support.
The fruit juice company is also warning customers to be patient after predicting far lower supplies of orange juice, this winter.
Months of extreme weather including a long drought and heatwaves have decimated the Valencia orange crops that nudie uses for it’s 100% orange juice. Some citrus growers report they are making more money from trading water, than growing orange crops.
“When the crop is low, it’s not worth putting the water on the crop as farmers get more money from selling water than they would from growing their crop and that’s before they even buy fertilisers,” says Griffith farmer, Frank Violi.
“During summer, we had 20 days where it was over 40 degrees. Usually the oranges keep falling off until January but with the heat we had in December, the oranges on the trees were no bigger than a 5 or 10 cent coin, they just cooked on the tree and dropped off.”
To educate Australians about the plight of farmers, from next month nudie will be connecting juice buyers with the impacted farmers via a QR code on each juice bottle that launches, a video featuring footage of the farms and stories from the farmers themselves.
“We deal with growers around the Riverina, Sunraysia and Riverland areas of Victoria and NSW,” explains nudie’s Head of Brand Marketing, Brooke Parker.
Additionally, with the Valencia orange volumes down by 40%, nudie has had to raise the price of its juice bottles to cover rising costs and keep the growers in business.
“We are committed to keeping the industry alive,” says Ms Parker.
Approximately 21 oranges are required to make a 2 litre bottle of nudie orange juice. However, due to the current orange shortage consumers are asked to be patient if they can’t find nudie juice on supermarket shelves on some days.
“Australia’s orange farmers desperately need our support, and we are committed to continuing to manufacture nudie juice from 100% juice sourced from Australian farmers.”
