In the 1860s, wheat rose to dominance in this valley. Hundreds of square miles of land were planted in the crop, fields so colossal that it was not uncommon for a team of plows to work their way across an expanse, then camp out for the night before rising the following day and forging back across the farm. A generation later, California emerged as the nation’s leader in wheat production. The bulk of the crop, produced with the help of horse-drawn plows and huge steam combines, was exported across the world. But wheat’s reign was brief. As early as 1883, wheat prices began to decline, bottoming out in 1894 as Argentina, Russia, Canada, India, and Australia began growing large quantities of grain and flooding the market. Meanwhile, California wheat growers, eager to cash in on the bonanza, began to deplete the fertility of the soil. When they sought new land to exploit, however, they found that prices were high, especially relative to such places as Kansas and elsewhere on the Great Plains, where land could be bought for little more than a filing fee. Hemmed in by the ocean and with nowhere else to turn, California wheat farmers would have to find higher-paying crops to grow if they wanted to prosper.3
This is where fruit and transportation came in. As long as farmers depended on local markets in the West to sell their fruit crop, overproduction and low prices for oranges, plums, grapes, and peaches would prevail. But if a way could be found to ship the produce—which unlike wheat was bulky and perishable—to markets in the Midwest and East, then California farmers might realize great wealth. Although a transcontinental rail link had been built by 1869, it was not until the 1880s, when competition brought down rates, that orchards turned to the railroads for shipping fresh produce. But they were only able to capitalize on the roads if they could ship the fruit east without its spoiling. It took the meat industry’s perfection of the refrigerated railroad car in the 1880s truly to launch the transcontinental shipment of fruit. In 1888, cherries and apricots left the Golden State aboard a train using the new refrigerated technology for shipping produce for the very first time. Firms such as Armour and Swift sent meat to California and loaded up their cars with fruit for the return trip. By the turn of the century, consumers in New York City and other urban areas could now buy fruits and vegetables out of season.4
Apart from being more perishable and bulkier than wheat, fruit also required more water. Especially in California’s drier southern reaches, that was a hard-to-come-by commodity. Irrigation offered an answer. Early on, some grape growers believed that irrigating led to a reduction in quality. However, California’s passage of the Wright Act in 1887—sanctioning the creation of government units to oversee the collective control of irrigation—coupled with droughts in 1889, 1890, and 1893, helped to convert the skeptical. By 1890, California had emerged as the nation’s leader in irrigated acreage. “But for irrigation,” one orchard owner explained in 1893, “much of our best fruit lands necessarily would be still a desert waste, and some of the special productions of the irrigated regions would be almost unknown in the great markets of the East.”5
Instead of expanding onto fresh soil—the basis for most agriculture in land-rich America up until this time—California fruit growers increased their yields by turning to such capital-intensive technologies as railroads and irrigation works. Instead of moving the frontier, they poured money and technology into the land in an effort to maximize output. This new industrial form of agriculture focused exclusively on the efficient production of crops for national and international markets, using large amounts of capital and wage labor.6
By the turn of the century, a sweeping 800-mile fruit belt stretched down the length of the state. Apple, pear, cherry, plum, and apricot orchards dominated in coastal areas. Inland in the Santa Clara valley—known today as Silicon Valley—plum trees yielding hundreds of pounds of fruit each spread out across the landscape long before anyone had even heard of high technology. By 1886, the state as a whole produced 40 million pounds of prunes, the bulk of which wound up shipped to the East. In the Central Valley, peaches and pears flourished, crops that ripened before the onset of the long, hot summer weather. Raisins, meanwhile, became the signature fruit of Fresno County, with growers availing themselves of the hot August sun to dry out the grapes.
New York area farmers lost significant ground to the California factory farms, especially during the winter season, when the climate made agriculture impossible. But when the weather turned warmer, New Yorkers still bought fresh locally grown produce, as they had done for generations. The farms that once spread out across Brooklyn and Queens succumbed by the 1920s, but not because the California growers undersold them. Instead, it was the superior marketing ability of their competitors across the continent that put them out of business.7
BROOKLYN FARMS
Now a byword for urban life, the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York, shown here in the 1870s, once hosted some of the most productive vegetable farms in the nation. (Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library)
SUN KISSED
Before the late nineteenth century, few Americans believed, as many commonly do today, in the value of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. In fact, many urbanites worried that eating fresh produce might actually worsen their health, bringing on such dread diseases as cholera or dysentery. Aside from the nuts and raisins consumed once or twice a year at holiday time, the diet of most Americans centered on foods full of fat, starch, and salt.8
Although truck farms had sprung up outside of major cities, introducing residents to a variety of fresh produce, it took a self-conscious effort on the part of California orchards to sell consumers on the idea that fruits and vegetables ought to play a part in everyone’s daily fare. By the turn of the century, the campaign appeared to be paying off. “The old prejudices against fruit are fast passing away,” observed one grower in 1893. “Fruit has become a necessity rather than a luxury.” In 1910, a housewife put it this way: “When I first began to keep house, ten years ago, we ate cereal, eggs and coffee for breakfast, with fruit occasionally instead of cereal; but now we must have grapefruit every morning…. [T]hen, when I go to market and see fresh beans, cucumbers and spinach, I buy them without really stopping to think; so easily tempted are we.” As the reference to fresh produce suggests, marketing on the part of California growers initially helped to increase the demand for locally grown produce.9
At one time, fruit passed into eastern markets with little concern for quality. But in an effort to stimulate national demand, California orchards set out to standardize their products. Growers and shippers joined in establishing formal sets of rules for packing fruit, specifying uniform box sizes and shapes. The fruit itself was classified into various grades—fancy, choice, and standard. “We must be guided by the experience and adopt the practices of other successful manufacturers, and so arrange and classify our products that each purchaser may secure the identical commodity he orders in the most convenient form,” explained one grower. The state government in California, spurred on by a freeze in 1912 that left many growers with little choice but to ship damaged fruit east, also stepped in and passed the Fresh Fruit, Nut, and Vegetable Standardization Act of 1917 to regulate quality.10
Growers themselves chose to specialize in those species of fruit that best met market imperatives. Some 60 different varieties of pears—Bosc, Giffard, Joan of Arc, Vicar, Wilder Early, among others—once grew on this continent. But California farmers eventually zeroed in on one main variety, the Bartlett, a pear that was easy to grow, can, and ship, and thus suitable for commercial harvesting. By the early twentieth century, Bartletts made up roughly 80 to 90 percent of the pears raised in California.11
Standardization helped orchards sell fruit in eastern markets, but to transform crops such as raisins and oranges into year-round staples, growers had to become more aggressive. New marketing organizations formed to oversee the harvesting, processing, and shipping of fruit, while engaging in brand name advertising. California raisin growers, centered in sunny Fresno County, produced record-setting yields in th
e 1890s, but found that demand did not keep up with supply, forcing down prices. To solve the problem of underconsumption, the growers founded a cooperative organization, but it soon failed. Then, in 1912, the California Associated Raisin Company was formed, a group uniting over 1,000 orchards. In one of the new company’s very first moves, it created the “Sun-Maid” brand name to market its product. Using one part feminine mystique and one part raw natural power, the company tried to sell Americans on the idea that they could get back in touch with nature and improve their health by buying the product. The Sun-Maid label, showing a girl in a red bonnet with the sun in the background, became one of the most successful trademarks in food history. Then the growers launched an advertising campaign, pitching the raisins in newspapers and women’s magazines. Sales agents went from grocer to grocer in major cities hawking the product. In the 1920s, the growers marketed raisins in little nickel packages, the perfect size to fit into a school lunch sack. In six months’ time, the company sold 17,000 tons of five-cent boxes valued at 18 million dollars. As consumption boomed, raisins went from being a luxury item eaten only on holidays to an expected and ordinary part of daily fare.12
As late as the early 1880s, oranges too remained a luxury item, more a Christmas stocking stuffer than a dietary staple. Since the end of the Civil War, growers in Florida had shipped oranges north by boat during the holiday season. By the mid-1880s, improved railroad transportation allowed Florida orchards to out-compete their counterparts in California for the eastern market. One New Jersey vegetable farmer marveled at the way that farmers in Florida “with their evergreen productiveness, have been able to revolutionize the old conditions, by sending to the northern cities, even when snow clad and ice bound, the fruits of balmy summer.” Then, in 1895, a freeze pummeled the Sunshine State. The year before the cold, Florida outstripped California by roughly a million boxes. The onset of the freeze, however, caused Florida production to plummet. By 1909, nearly three-quarters of all the citrus consumed in the United States came from California.13
But more than just a cold spell accounted for California’s lock on the national orange market. In 1885, Americans consumed almost no citrus fruit; in 1914, they were eating roughly 40 oranges per year. Credit for that change must go to the California Fruit Growers Exchange, founded in 1893 (eight years after Florida established a similar organization). The exchange united some 15,000 growers and 200 packing associations around the processing and marketing of citrus. At one time, some 200 different brand name oranges existed. The fruit exchange, however, sought to streamline marketing by creating the Sunkist (originally Sun Kissed) trademark and stamping it on each and every orange grown. During the early decades of the twentieth century, Sunkist’s marketers blanketed the nation with images of its product. It created picturesque labels for use on the tens of millions of citrus crates it shipped every year. It advertised in newspapers and magazines, set up billboards, helped grocers and especially chain stores to create elaborate window displays, and ran promotional spots on the radio. By the early 1930s, the organization had over 1,000 billboards in 11 metropolitan markets, including one in New York’s Times Square that reached, it is estimated, one million people each day.14
The invention of the electric juicer and the discovery that ascorbic acid (vitamin C) prevented scurvy bolstered Sunkist’s marketing prospects. By the middle of the 1930s, a fifth of all Sunkist oranges were being consumed in juice form. In the early years of the twentieth century, middle-class Americans commonly worried that the advent of modern, urban life had cut them off from the natural world, especially the sunlight that had formerly fostered good mental and physical health. Advertisers capitalized on this yearning for nature by warning mothers to make sure that their children received food in its natural form. And what could be more wholesome than a sun-kissed orange? Oranges soon became an essential part of a normal, healthy diet. Per capita consumption shot up during the first two decades of the twentieth century. “The public may remember the slogan, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away,’” wrote one observer in 1928, “but it possesses much more specific and convincing information concerning the health value of oranges.” Hailed as an antidote to the ills of modern living, the orange surpassed the apple as the key to health, a means of putting a little sun into everyone’s day.15
SUNKIST DISPLAY
Before the early twentieth century, Americans purchased food from neighborhood grocers, who stood behind counters and took their orders. The Piggly Wiggly chain, first opened in 1916, pioneered self-service grocery shopping, allowing customers to choose fruit, often artfully displayed, and other items for themselves. (Library of Congress)
Not wanting to be left behind, prune and apricot growers also adopted the solar motif, forming the Sunsweet brand in 1917. Growers tapped the sun’s energy and then turned around and marketed the fruit by convincing consumers of the wholesomeness of their product. It was a perfect strategy for reaching sun-starved city dwellers. Advertisements of women proffering the fruits of the land conveyed the impression that what consumers bought came straight from nature to their kitchen table. But such an image obscured the role played by both the growers and the workers they hired. Flawless oranges and plump raisins could be bought in urban groceries and chain stores with nary a thought given to the incredible amount of human energy that went into making them.16
COPING WITH PESTS
The first step in producing perfect-looking plums and oranges was to find the right species for a particular growing environment. Luther Burbank, a Massachusetts-born plant breeder, probably had more impact in this regard than any other individual. In the 1870s, Burbank, seeking to improve the vegetable varieties available in New England, invented a potato well adapted to the region’s stony soil. He then headed west to the Golden State, where he continued to cross-fertilize and graft plants with an eye toward their commercial value. “Only by growing the most perfect fruit possible could a profit be made,” he told a group gathered in Sacramento in 1899. “The fruit grower of to-day is strictly a manufacturer, and should have the latest and best improvements.” By this he meant fruit engineered to grow rapidly, such as the plums—large, rich in sugar, and easy to ship—he introduced into California in the 1880s.17
Although one newspaper once called him “the Edison of horticultural mysteries,” Burbank is scarcely remembered today. In part, his obscurity stems from the fact that he never received legal recognition for his work. Edison had over 1,000 patents to his name; Burbank had not a single one. The originator of Idaho’s now famous Russet Burbank potato, a crop valued at 17 million dollars in 1906, he garnered just 150 dollars for his efforts. “A man can patent a mouse trap or copyright a nasty song,” he once wrote, “but if he gives to the world a new fruit that will add millions to the value of earth’s annual harvests he will be fortunate if he is rewarded by so much as having his name connected with the result.” Not until the passage of the Plant Patent Act in 1930 was it possible for plant breeders to transform living things such as fruit trees into intellectual property.18
Growing species tailor-made for sale on the national market was one thing. But orchards had to overcome a number of other obstacles if they were going to profit by providing consumers with perfect-looking fruit. Chief among these was the threat posed by a variety of agricultural pests. When California’s growers replaced the region’s natural vegetation—its sweeping expanses of tules, a grass much like a bulrush, and its perennial species of bunchgrass—with domesticated plants, they opened themselves up to insect infestation, like all farmers who simplify an ecosystem. The problem was made considerably worse by the huge number of plant species imported into the state in the 60 years after 1860: exotic varieties of apple, plum, and cherry trees, plus hundreds of other shrubs and vines. With the new plants came insects, buried in the fruit and hidden under the bark.19
Numerous such pests existed, including the pear slug, the apricot shot hole, peach blight, red scale, purple scale, citrus mealy-bug, red spid
er mite, and on and on. Perhaps the most troublesome insect was the cottony cushion scale, a bug that attacked California’s orange groves beginning in the 1880s. It is hard to say how the scale arrived. One theory is that it first appeared back in 1868, when a shipment of Australian lemon trees arrived in San Mateo County. The scale then worked its way south. Growers first tried oil soaps, liquid sprays, and hydrocyanic gas. But none of the remedies worked. Eventually, it dawned on some Americans that since growers in Australia did not suffer from the scale, a predator must have existed there that kept the insect in check. On a visit to Australia in 1888, an American delegation returned with a species of ladybug that they hoped would rid California of the problem. Miraculously, the strategy worked. The beetle was able to fly, flitting from tree to tree and preying on the immobile scale fixed on leaves and branches. Liberated from the pest, California’s citrus industry boomed in the last decade of the nineteenth century.20
It was a novel solution to an intractable problem, but using bugs to fight bugs—known as biological control—proved a short-lived solution. It was impossible to find predators to deal with all the insects that threatened California’s fruit and vegetable crops. And not all predators survived when transported out of their original habitat. Chemicals, however, offered what many growers saw as a more workable solution. Orchards eventually turned to new synthetic poisons such as arsenate of lead. Supported by the research of scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, fruit growers sprayed and fumigated their way to success, as yields per acre marched upward by early in the twentieth century.21
Down to Earth_Nature's Role in American History Page 24
