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In Florida groves, grocery isles, and even corporate board rooms, people are being squeezed by orange shortages that have sent the juice prices to the record highs, Florida is the world second largest orange producer with Brazil holding the top spot and most of the state's crops have turned into juice. But over the past 2 years, orange production has been rubbished by hurricane and tree diseases that were spread by storm winds. As a result, consumers are seeing an average 9% jump in retail juice price in this year and they can go up even more, Richard.

Oh, Gerri, I guess, you and I don't like it as a consumer, but, those producers must be like the price, right?
Well. the juice brands are worried because higher retail prices hurt sales. Also the Florida orange shortage has force the juice marketer to import expensive juice from Brazil which is eroding the profit margins. All of these will show up in earning statements.

The two biggest juice brands Tropicana and Minute Maid are owned by large corporation, Pe, Pepsico is the parent of Tropicana, while Minute Maid is the unit of Coca Cola. Both had warned that the juice squeeze could hurt their overall earnings.

And in other food news, the pace of growth in the organic segment in the... of the industry is reportedly stalling because the public is balking at high prices. According to Ad Age magazine, some companies are spending more to market a new organic food than they earn from the product. Uniliver for example, spend 20 million dollars this year to promote organic version of Ragu pa, pasta sauce but the offering flops. So next year, Uniliver says organic Ragu will be in no more than 15% of traditional grocery stores. Richard.

You know, you got to ask, Gerri. those folks, those chains do carry organic foods, like Wholefood, why are they doing well. then?

Well, it is interesting, stores like Wholefood target more affluent shoppers and they're still moving lots of organic merchandise. The problem for the industry is that it's not expanding beyond its current niche. Organic food is a 14-billion-dollar a year business but that's less then 3% of total food sales.

And finally, a new report says people are heading to work, they're heading the road earlier, traveling farther, and driving alone more often. The transportation research board and independent advisory group also found that more folks are commuting between suburbs as suppose to going from suburbs to cities. The group says that from 1990 to 2000, there is almost a 15% increase in numbers of people would commute longer than an hour. Also to beat traffic, more American are leaving for works before 6:30 Am. One of another note in that 10 year span, the number of solo drivers grew by almost 30%