Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Apples
Americans have always been proprietary about apples. More than any other fruit, they serve
as an icon of many of the characteristics we hold most dear: hardiness, pioneering spirit
and just plain goodness. But sometimes when you identify with a thing too much, you take
it for granted. And that's just what happened with apples.
For most of the twentieth century, the United States dominated the world's apple trade.
We shipped apples around the globe, making Red and Golden Delicious household names
from Argentina to Italy to Taiwan. Today the United States has lost that lead, and by an
overwhelming margin. China, a country that barely grew any apples to speak of thirty years
ago, now grows one third of all the apples in the world - more than five times as many
apples are harvested in China every year as in the United States. American apple exports
fell by a third between 1994 and 2004, dropping the United States into third place behind
China and Chile.
And those juggernaut American apple varieties Red and Golden Delicious? They're fad-
ing, too. Granted, they are still the most common apples in the United States, but they no
longer tower over all the others as they once did. Instead, they are being shoved aside by
new, often imported varieties. Red Delicious, which once made up almost half of the na-
tional harvest, now accounts for only a little more than a quarter. Instead, the market is
crowded with new and perhaps unfamiliar types such as Gala, Fuji, Honeycrisp and Pink
Lady.
How did all this come about? Like anything involving world trade and agriculture, the
answers are many and complicated. But if you need a one-word summary, "complacency"
would be a good place to start. The recent history of the American apple industry is a good
example of what can happen when you think you have the world on a string.
At one time hundreds of apple varieties were grown in the United States. Each region
had its own stable from which to choose. But the modern American apple industry, which
has been dominated by Washington State farmers since the 1920s, was built on two vari-
eties: Golden Delicious and Red Delicious. The former is a very good apple - when it is
allowed to mature to the point that it is truly golden and not green. Unfortunately, it usually
isn't.
