Why is my orange juice only 33% Australian?

[old man emu]

Me Mum sent me to the shops today 'cause she was out of orange juice. Of late I've become acutely aware that a lot of our packaged food like frozen vegetables and canned vegetables is marked as being the product of a foreign country. So I had a good look at the orange juice. One brand was marked "Packaged in Australia from 30% local sources". To me that meant that apart from maybe the plastic container and printed label, the juice was imported concentrate, diluted with Aussie water. I did find two products that actually were 100% Australian and came from either Walgett or Narromine, NSW. I bought the Narromine one because it's more local and I remember Mum buying oranges from there years ago.

 

We've golden soil, and wealth for toil, so why are we importing foods we can readily grow here? Fruit and vegetable processors have struggled due to fierce external competition. Rising import penetration and high operating costs have diminished the competitiveness of locally processed goods in foreign markets and on home soil. Imports' share of domestic demand has skyrocketed due to lower overseas prices. 

 

Supermarkets are warming more towards importing processed goods for their private-label brands, highlighting a threat to the lucrative long-term contracts that many domestic processors rely on. This intense competition has eaten away at fruit and vegetable processors' profitability in recent years. (No pun intended). The only light at the end of the tunnel might be the rising popularity of organic produce among health-conscious consumers which has accelerated the growth of the domestic price of fruits and vegetables over the past few years.

 

I came across a video about pears being grown in Argentina; sent to Thailand for processing and packaging, and then shipped to the USA for sale. Swap the destination of the final product from the UA to Australia, and the story remains the same. In fact, the brand of packaged fruit shown in the video is on the shelf at your local Woolies.

 

 

[facthunter]

We grow cotton and almonds and rice. The price of water here is so high you can't use it for our local needs.   The citrus on the Murray was pulled outyears ago.  Nev

Edited December 11, 2023 by facthunter

[onetrack]

I've stopped buying orange juice because the vast majority of it comes from Brazil in concentrate - where some decidedly nasty additives are added, to it to try and preserve it for an extended period.

What is worse, there's no requirement for any Australian orange juice packaging operation to report on what chemicals and additives are added to the product, at the location where it originates - only what is added here.

[old man emu]

Here's the story of Mumble Peg Juice:

https://thefarmermagazine.com.au/juicing-it-mumble-peg-citrus-sets-to-expand/

[onetrack]

We've got Moora Citrus over here on the left coast, who have a massive orange growing operation covering 210Ha of orchards - yet, as a local, I hardly see a Moora Citrus orange - because they sell vast amounts of fruit to the Chinese, at prices Australians can't pay!! They haven't even bothered with juicing yet. Their oranges are a premium product, and they claim to be filling local demand - but I find more Eastern States-grown oranges in the shops, than I find local oranges!

 

Harvey, about 150kms S of Perth is our main citrus area - and the locals started a big juicing operation there in the early 1980's. Their Harvey Fresh juice was to die for - but as with everything, big Chinese money rocked up about 15 yrs ago, and they sold out to the Chinese - and now Harvey Fresh OJ is made from Brazilian concentrate!!

 

https://mooracitrus.com.au/

 

Edited December 11, 2023 by onetrack

[Bruce Tuncks]

I once read how plantation workers in Brazil could not afford orange juice for their kids.

[willedoo]

16 hours ago, onetrack said:

I've stopped buying orange juice because the vast majority of it comes from Brazil in concentrate - where some decidedly nasty additives are added, to it to try and preserve it for an extended period.

What is worse, there's no requirement for any Australian orange juice packaging operation to report on what chemicals and additives are added to the product, at the location where it originates - only what is added here.

I don't know if you can buy it in WA, but the only orange juice I buy is the Nudie brand. It's 100% Australian product and juice only. Nothing added, not even water. The company is based in NSW. They have a full pulp orange juice as well as pulp free, and another one which is carrot, apple, orange and ginger combined. It's good stuff. 

[willedoo]

19 hours ago, old man emu said:

The only light at the end of the tunnel might be the rising popularity of organic produce among health-conscious consumers which has accelerated the growth of the domestic price of fruits and vegetables over the past few years.

ome, it's good to hear someone say something positive about organic produce for a change. The majority of people mock anything to do with healthy eating.

Edited December 12, 2023 by willedoo

[facthunter]

I aimed for "organic" with my vineyard, but I'd never get accreditation because of others around me. Still helps though.. Lots around me up there, have since died of cancer. Nev

[willedoo]

That was a big issue a few years ago in the Cooper Creek catchment area in SW Queensland. A company wanted to harvest water into dams and grow cotton on the black soil areas. All the station owners were against it, not only for the disruption of water supply, but are lot in the area are accredited organic producers of beef. That organic status would be at risk with cotton in the district. Luckily the government sided with the cattle producers and environmentalists and didn't approve the plan.

[facthunter]

There's a long list of "Bugs" that affect cotton. Even in the 60's a mate of mine flying a Ceres (based on the Wirraway" at night hit a patch of warm air and cartwheeled in the crop. That cut short his flying career, but didn't kill him.  Nev

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, willedoo said:

ome, it's good to hear someone say something positive about organic produce for a change. The majority of people mock anything to do with healthy eating.

You praise me falsely, my good man! I hadn't even thought of "organically" grown foodstuffs when I wrote that. I simply meant that people would prefer to eat food produced under conditions subject to the supervision/control of their elected governments.

 

Remember Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi lyric?

Hey farmer
Put away your DDT
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and bees

 

DDT is a bit like fire. It is a two-edged sword.  DDT was used in the second half of World War II to limit the spread of the insect-borne diseases malaria and typhus among civilians and troops. The WHO's anti-malaria campaign of the 1950s and 1960s relied heavily on DDT and the results were promising, though there was a resurgence in developing countries afterwards. Opposition to DDT was focused by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. It talked about environmental impacts that correlated with the widespread use of DDT in agriculture in the United States, and it questioned the logic of broadcasting potentially dangerous chemicals into the environment with little prior investigation of their environmental and health effects. That questioning is akin to the that of Thalidomide in the 1960s, and so many man-made chemicals since. DDT and Dioxin (Agent Orange) are no exactly the same, but related, like chimpanzees and gorillas.

 

The common belief is that both these chemicals are raging monsters, base on scientific research, but toxicologists mistakenly concluded from studies on laboratory animals that TCDD (dioxin) was one of the most toxic of all man-made substances… Subsequent research, however, discounted most of these inferences, which were based on the effects of very high doses of TCDD on guinea pigs and other peculiarly susceptible animals. It seems that it was the testing method that was flawed. Having said that, it is also agreed that these chemicals are not entirely harmless.

 

The results of a soon-to-be study of the water quality of the Richmond River, situated in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, have shown the presence of nearly 40 separate chemicals in the water samples, including several that have been banned from agricultural use. One can only guess at the unnatural chemical composition of our inland rivers that flow through our agricultural lands. 

 

And that makes me worried, since today I bought myself a legal yabby trap and am going to try it out in the creek that flows through the property I live on.

[facthunter]

You'll be alright Just put them in water in the Laundry tub for a while to get the grit out of their intestines.  Nev

[old man emu]

As a novice yabbier, please tell me:

1. Do I just put them in clean drinkable water, or do I put something in the water to make them spew and crap?

2. To cook them, do I drop them into boiling water until they go pink like prawns and lobster?

3. Is there another way to kill them so they look like green prawns?

[facthunter]

Just good tap water is enough. I freeze them to avoid the pain of being boiled alive. Tip them in quickly with the water boiling well and maybe a bit of salt in the water. The blue parts turn the darkest red Most of them are the NATIVE one and are the best.  I don't think you are allowed to farm them as they are sort of Protected.. They don't appear to be very threatened. Some of them have nippers big enough to eat. Eat them like a small marron . Just the tail cut down the middle and are good Cold also. Nev.