Orange Juice and an Ottava Rima

The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…

By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

For those of you who read my a-z Challenge Theme Reveal, you will know that the choice of Commodities as this year’s theme (plus poems), began with a wondering about whether there could really be enough oranges in the world to supply our desire to have orange juice on hand wherever we go – in case you missed it I reproduce the wondering below.

The Wondering…

Consider this – you go to your local supermarket to buy, among other things, some orange juice. You find the right section where there are several brands to choose from, fresh in the chiller and long-life too – perhaps a hundred-litre packets all told. That’s just your local shop, imagine how many shops there are in your town or city each with a hundred litres of orange juice on sale at any particular time – and remember, this stock is turning over all the time – being bought and then replaced with stock from the store room. Multiply by the number of cities in your country and then by the number of orange juice-drinking countries in the world and you have imagined an ocean of orange juice! Where does it all come from – especially considering it takes eight oranges to make a litre of juice? Are there enough orange trees in the world to account for all this juice?

Of course, if you believe in Solipsism – then you will think that the world only exists because you imagine it into being and of course, you want to have plenty of orange juice wherever you go, so you imagine it into being present in all those thousands of shops worldwide. I am more of a realist and so I know that there must be enough orange trees to provide the juice – I just have no idea where!

Most people have no idea where all that orange juice comes from either and what about dried mint in all those expensive little jars – you may have holidayed in some sunny spot and seen oranges growing, but when did you ever see a mint farm?

The Answers!

Before giving those answers, you will know by now that I like to tease out some unusual facts about each Commodity and for today it is legislation nicknamed the “Eddie Murphy rule”. At the end of the 1983 movie Trading Places, Eddie Murphy jumps into Dan Aykroyd’s arms, the pair shouting in delight because they have just gamed the orange juice futures market bandstand to make a fortune. In the film, Murphy and Aykroyd created a fake crop report to scam the market as a result of which Wall Street eventually made it illegal to trade on inside information obtained from the government and immortalised Eddie Murphy (as if he needed it) in the hallowed halls of financial investment.

For years, the trade in Orange Juice Futures was something of a backwater in the Commodity Trading world, but in 2023, all that changed – the price of OJ futures surged by 92% and it is what that tells us about both the perils and profits to be made from soft commodity futures which is interesting.

Although the US is only number 3 among the world’s orange producers behind Brazil and China by a country mile, a disastrous crop of oranges in Florida, which grows 90% of US orange crops annually, led to the dramatic rise in prices. Once the prices started to spiral in the US, then investors started buying futures from outside the US and so the spiral, like a tropical storm passing over warm seas, was fuelled. In fact actual tropical storms were part of the problem – hurricanes Ian and Nicole, in the Autumn of 2022 autumn, which destroyed 10% of the orange trees, followed by freezing conditions were compounded by the third factor in a triple whammy – an incurable citrus greening disease that has been ravaging trees for years. The disease, also known as Huanglongbing or yellow dragon disease, typically kills off crops within five years. So the harvest in Florida was the lowest in 2023 for a century. But all this turmoil is what thrust OJ futures into the trading limelight – as long as a commodity “future” remains stable, there is nothing to gamble on – and that is what all trading in stocks, shares and commodities is – gambling. As soon as the prices of OJ futures started to climb, then the possibility of making a killing by getting in whilst the prices were lower and cashing in when they were highest became irresistible to traders.

So now for the answers to where the oranges come from to gratify our needs worldwide…

And here are the countries that consume the orange juice…

Why orange juice? Well because the demand is for juice more than for whole fruit and its cheaper to transport the frozen, concentrated juice without all that skin and pith. Hence Orange juice futures. And what about those little jars of dried mint – are they a commodity? They are not – the sector is too small and diversified around the world – to be a commodity, you have to be big – in the case of orange juice – $6 Billion big!

And so to the poem whose “O” form today is Ottavo Rima (I imagine meaning eight/rhymes) and consists of eight iambic lines, usually iambic pentameters. Each stanza consists of three rhymes following the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c.

Orange Juice – an Ottavo Rima

When I grew up, the orange was a treat
Compared to the apple, fruit of England
The orange came from far away to meet
Our post-war need for vitamin C and
Exotic fruit from far-off lands of heat
In a world our parents had fought for, and
Too, beside the fresh and juicy fruit we
Also had a glass of orange juice for tea.

Orange drink made from concentrated juice
Which tasted all the better when we were
Allowed to make it stronger, rules loose
Or a blind eye turned by him or her
For indeed they loved it just like us
Post rationing is it any wonder
That orange juice was the prize of their life
For family and for husband and wife.

© Andrew Wilson, 2024