Bloomberg News reports orange juice futures jumped 6.2 percent before Wednesday, the largest increase in 16 months, ahead of the feared landfall of Hurricane Irma in Florida. The scale-topping hurricane remains on track to threaten Southeast U.S. agriculture later this week. Florida is the nation’s top orange producer, and all of the state’s crop is at risk of moderate to severe damage, with trees already full of fruit. Florida is also the nation’s biggest sugar producer, and sugarcane crops could be knocked down, or lose sugar content, from the hurricane. Meanwhile, as Gulf Coast cotton growers are assessing damage, cotton futures surged 5.5 percent last week, following Hurricane Harvey’s destruction in parts of Texas and around the Mississippi Delta.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.