Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the USA, the former USSR, France, Turkey, Iran and Italy, between them pro-
ducing
these
were still the top sixproducing countries, but production in China had risen
to
% of a world output of
metric tons (MT). In
.
million MT out of a global total of
.
million MT (Belrose,
).
production in northwestern and central Europe
(France, Germany, Belgium/Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and the
UK) was relatively constant, although that in the Netherlands increased and
that in the UK declined. Output from Italy increased up to
From
/
to
and then
changed very little while production in Poland, Spain, Hungary and Romania
increased substantially.
ThemoderneraofappleproductioninJapanbeganinthe
s,whenmore
than
cultivars of apple were introduced from western countries and dis-
tributed by the government, mainly to prefectures in northern Japan (Fukuda,
). These replaced the poor crab-apple type of apples called 'Waringo'
(
M. asiatica
Nakai) which had been grown in Japan from the fifteenth century.
The cvs. 'Ralls Janet' and 'Jonathan' dominated until the
s when they
were replaced by 'Fuji', which was bred in Japan, and by 'Delicious' strains,
the latter then being largely replaced by newer, mainly locally-bred, cultivars.
Total production of apples in Japan remained relatively constant from
onwards but elsewhere in Asia there were dramatic increases in production.
In western Asia, production in Turkey increased steadily over the period,
from
MT on average in
/
to
MT in
, while that
in Iran increased very rapidly from the
s onwards. In India expansion
in production was fairly steady, while in Pakistan most of it came after
.In
east Asia the increase in production in the two Koreas came well before that
in China, where it was much greater in the
s than in any earlier period.
Indeed, the increase in production in China was the dominant feature of world
apple growing in the
s. The largest production was in Shandong province,
across the Yellow Sea from South Korea and southern Japan, followed by
Liaoning to the north, Hubei in central China, Hunan, Shaanxi and Shanxi
(Shou-Chun,
). As has typically been the case where there have been
large planned increases in production in 'new' areas, there was emphasis on
production of new cultivars with high consumer demand. By the late
s
approximately
%oftheapplesgrowninChinawereoftheJapanesecv.'Fuji',
which returned twice the price per kilogram compared with the previously
dominant 'Red Delicious'. Although the main market was within the country,
apples were exported to Far East Russia, and to Hong Kong and Singapore
from which they were re-exported to the rest of Asia.
In North America expansion of production was relatively moderate and
steady in Canada and the USA, doubling between
/
and
, whereas
it increased
-fold over the same period in Mexico with the greatest growth
in absolute terms in the
s.
