Geo final essay rough draft

.docx

School

Queens University *

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101

Subject

Economics

Date

Feb 20, 2024

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docx

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Uploaded by naomifun1

How simple is Simply’s Orange Juice journey to you? The product I chose for the Geography of X project is Simply Orange Juice. You would think that a product as simple as Orange Juice has a clean record, especially with a company being well known, however there is always some sort of negative work ethic involved. As an orange juice company that is founded in America, a four season country, the American farming facilities cannot cover the growing demand for Simplys raw oranges, therefore, they import oranges from outside of the US, including Brazil and Mexico at different times of the year. “Brazil is the world's leading exporter of orange juice (OJ) and accounts for nearly 80% of the OJ marketed in the world”, (Brazil's Orange Juice Production And Exports, 2023). Currently, Brazil is controlling the US orange juice market. More than 50 percent of orange juice is bottled in the following country. Then it is imported to the USA (Ethan, 2022). According to author Peter Chung, who wrote “How Brazil Stole The Production Of Orange Juice From Florida”, one 2015 report from activist organization Supply Cha!nge called the orange picking industry in Brazil “a modern system of slavery.” Workers are sometimes unpaid for weeks and trapped in employment contracts that keep them in debt and stuck on the plantation, the report says. Not so clean now, right? The manufacturing process of Simply Orange Juice to extract oranges clearly has a contribution to spatial justice that has led to uneven economic distribution in many countries. Spatial justice is how society benefits and burdens are distributed fairly and unfairly, making some groups feel the consequences of the effects more than others. In the

case of Simply Orange, core countries gain while periphery countries are exploited in many ways. In Brazil, orange juice is highly profitable. Following a string of freezing temperatures that decimated orange groves in Florida during the 1960s, Brazil responded to the shortage by producing its own orange juice, initially in the form of frozen concentrate. Then, in 2005, the citrus greening disease made its way to Miami from China, where it had spread around the globe. It made oranges in impacted groves unfit for human consumption, and over the following ten years, output fell by fifty-five percent as a result. Bottlers switched to less expensive Brazilian orange juice, after Florida's orange growers increased orange juice prices by almost $2 per gallon in retaliation. Nowadays, a Brazilian company ships its orange juice in specially designed fruit juice tankers from the Port of Santos in Sao Paulo, providing more than half of the orange juice that is bottled by large companies like Tropicana, and Simply Oranges. The value of this orange juice export market was $1.4 billion in 2017. Brazil became the financial supporter of a large portion of American orange juice when Brazilian orange juice companies used this cash infusion to enter the United States and acquire Florida's production facilities. However, now that the orange juice production is based in Brazil, this raises concern to the workers that live there. Cheaper Brazilian orange juice has some serious costs. As we know, one 2015 report from activist organization Supply Cha!nge called the orange picking industry in Brazil “a modern system of slavery.” Workers are sometimes unpaid for weeks and trapped in employment contracts that keep them in debt and stuck on the plantation, the report says. The

report also alleges that high pesticide use leads to unsafe working conditions and even death. Supply Cha!nge claims the orange juice produced under these conditions ends up in Simply Orange, Tropicana and Minute Maid bottles (Chung, 2023) The European orange juice supply chain was recently examined by the Association of Conscious Consumers (ACC/TVE). The study looked into the impact of supermarket buying power on sustainability, working conditions, and consumer choices. The Brazilian Instituto Observatório Social (IOS) and the German CIR's research served as the foundation for a film that the ACC made regarding the supply chain for Brazilian orange juice. The findings from the study are very alarming, as they expose the working conditions on these orange farms in Brazil. These findings include, up to 30 kg are contained in the sacks that laborers tie around their bodies to harvest. In order to receive the standard minimum wage of € 260 per month, the workers must harvest 60 sacks per day. The ladders that employees are expected to use are inappropriate for the tasks at hand. Field workers are not provided with access to drinking water and there aren't enough restrooms on the plantations either. The factories are loud and sweltering, no ventilation and not enough light. In the factories and on the plantations, there is a strong anti-union feeling. (FairTrade, 2013) This connects to my thesis because it illustrates how large corporations, such as Simply Oranges profit from developing nations where people must labor unfavorable working conditions in order to survive. Not only do these workers experience unfair working conditions on these farms, but they also are victims of ‘Blatant slavery’. “Brazilian companies violate the labor act 1992 by forcing factory workers to work under low wages. It results in a lower price of orange juice on the market” (Ethan, 2022). Workers must harvest about two tonnes of oranges every day to

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