Lemon Juice Shortage: The Wait Is Still On!

While cruising over your local grocery stores, many of you might have noticed the empty shelves where the lemon juice is supposed to be. This might not be a cause of botheration initially as it is quite common to see grocery stores run out of one food item or the other on a daily basis. But yes when this absence stretched a bit too far, Americans were at last forced to switch over to fresh lemons. Though most Americans love lemon juice undoubtedly but fresh lemons were the only alternative left for them if they wish to continue having that tarty flavor in their dishes or for other essential purposes.

The summer of 2008 marked the sour time for lemon lovers. It is quite a tricky task to find lemon juice in the nearby stores. The worldwide lemon juice shortage was finally found to be the culprit for this inconvenience to the customers and grocery stores are not to be blamed for that.

Freezing weather in 2007 in Argentina and California destroyed fruits and led to this shortage. Not only this, but crops were also hurt in Australia and Spain due to the drought conditions there. The combined results of the international weather have thereby made it difficult to access lemon juice in stores. Sunkist, a major international citrus supplier revealed a 25% decrease in the global supply of lemons.

As expected, lemon prices are skyrocketing due to the equilibrium of demand and supply being disturbed by the shortage. With fresh lemons priced at almost one dollar each in some areas, it is way beyond the budget of many people.

Moreover, the shortage of lemon juice can be felt even more due to the fact that though less in availability, fresh lemons when sold in the market directly reap more profit than when sold to the processing industry. So, manufacturers of lemon juices are helpless. Also, even when the consumers have the alternative to switch over to fresh lemons from lemon juice, they are not happy because the former is definitely more expensive, while they both taste the same.

However, lemon juice shortage still prevails from quite a few months now but the experts are positive that it will be resolved by the middle of 2009, provided that nothing hampers the growing condition of crops.

So the question here seems to be “What to do when life stops throwing lemons at you?” Wait for mid-2009 is what experts suggest. Or you may simply buy the expensive fresh lemons, if you are the highly privileged lot.