Oranges or "Lemons"? Family farming and product quality in the Spanish orange industry, 1870-1960

Agricultural History

Volumn 84, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 224-243

  Garrido, Samuel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITAT JAUME I   (Spain)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS; AGRICULTURAL HISTORY; AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION; CAPITAL; CROP PRODUCTION; EXPORT; FARMING SYSTEM; FRUIT; FRUIT PRODUCTION; PEASANT AGRICULTURE; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

AGRICULTURE; ARTICLE; CATERING SERVICE; COMMERCIAL PHENOMENA; CULTURAL FACTOR; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FAMILY RELATION; FAMILY SIZE; FOOD INDUSTRY; HEALTH; HISTORY; LEGAL ASPECT; RURAL POPULATION; SOUTHERN EUROPE; SPAIN; SWEET ORANGE; UNITED STATES;

AGRICULTURE; CALIFORNIA; CITRUS SINENSIS; COMMERCE; CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS; FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS; FAMILY RELATIONS; FOOD INDUSTRY; FOOD SUPPLY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; MEDITERRANEAN REGION; RURAL HEALTH; RURAL POPULATION; SPAIN;

MEDITERRANEAN SEA; SPAIN; UNITED KINGDOM;

CITRUS;

EID: 77953242240     PISSN: 00021482     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3098/ah.2010.84.2.224     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. The author is most indebted to Vicente Abad, Salvador Calatayud, Franco Cazzola, Eric Chaney, Jesús Millán, Alan Olmstead, Vicente Pinilla, Paul Preston, and James Simpson for all their help. The aim of this paper is to reflect on these questions taking the pre-1960 Spanish orange industry as a source of information. During the 1930s and 1940s Spanish orange farming went through a difficult period, partly due to a series of meteorological disasters and partly due to the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. Since it recovered from the 1950s onward, ending the study in 1936 or in 1950 would have left the reader with a falsely negative impression. Juan Morilla, Alan L. Olmstead, and Paul Rhode, "International Competition and the Development of the Dried-Fruit Industry, 1880-1930, " in The Mediterranean Response to Globalization Before 1950, ed. Şevket Pamuk and Jeffrey G. Williamson (London: Routledge, 2000), 228.
2. Jose Morilla Critz, Alan L. Olmstead, and Paul W. Rhode, '"Horn of Plenty': The Globalization of Mediterranean Horticulture and the Economic Development of Southern Europe, 1880-1930, " Journal of Economic History 59 (June 1999): 316-52.
3. Jose Morilla Critz, Alan L. Olmstead, and Paul W. Rhode, '"Horn of Plenty': The Globalization of Mediterranean Horticulture and the Economic Development of Southern Europe, 1880-1930, " Journal of Economic History 59, 1999, Ibid., 324.
4. Vicente Pinilla and Maria-Isabel Ayuda, "Market Dynamism and International Trade: A Case Study of Mediterranean Agricultural Products, 1850-1935, " Applied Economics 40 (Mar. 2008): 583-95;.
5. US Department of Commerce, International Trade in Citrus Fruits (Washington, DC: GPO, 1929), 1, 33;.
6. Jacob Metzer, "Economic Growth and External Trade in Mandatory Palestine: A Special Mediterranean Case, " in Mediterranean Response, 375-79.
7. Rafael Font de Mora, El naranjo, su cultivo y explotacidn (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1935), 57-59, 191-95, 206;.
8. Nahum Karlinsky, California Dreaming: Ideology, Society, and Technology in the Citrus Industry of Palestine: 1890-1939 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005);.
9. José Bellver Mustieles, Esbozo de la futura economla valenciana (Valencia: Talleres Tipográficos "La Gutenberg, " 1933), 187;.
10. California (Los Angeles) Citrograph, May 1930, 306.
11. Wilder also wrote: "It is obvious from what has been said that good oranges can be produced in great quantities in Spain, at low cost." But on other occasions the reporters made hard, even derogatory, comments. After explaining that he had not tried Spanish oranges because he visited the country at a time when there was no ripe fruit, D. C King, sales agent of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, concluded that: "You will see from the foregoing that the trip to Spain was very interesting, but not particularly instructive The average of their fruit is not high class, " California Citrograph, Feb. 1928, 143.
12. George A. Akerlof, "The Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism, " Quarterly Journal of Economics 84 (Aug. 1970): 488-500.
13. The drop in the exports to mainland Europe in the 1950s shown in Figure 1 was caused by a devastating freeze in 1956. The United Kingdom, France, and Germany imported 543, 191, and 257 thousand metric tons per year, respectively, in 1934-38 compared with 381, 595, and 528 (Federal Republic of Germany) in 1955-60. Max Liniger-Goumaz, L'orange d'Espagne sur les marches européens (Geneva: Les Edition du Temps, 1962), 42.
14. Salvador Calatayud i Giner, "L'expansió citrícola valenciana. Producció i propietat de la terra a la Ribera del Xúquer (1850-1930), " Recerques 22 (1989): 97-115.
15. California Citrograph, May 1930, 306.
16. California Citrograph, Ibid., Dec. 1922, 36.
17. All the information about Spain comes from Samuel Garrido, Cànem gentil L'evolució California Citrograph de les estructures agràries a la Plana de Castelló (1750-1930) (Castelló de la Plana: Consell Municipal de Cultura, 2004);.
18. Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930. Agriculture. III (Washington, DC: GPO, 1932), 412;.
19. William Hazen, The Citrus Industry of Palestine (Washington, DC: USDA, 1938), 44;.
20. Comunidad de Labradores, Memoria (Vila-real: Imp. de F. Chabrera, 1914);.
21. Font de Mora, El naranjo, 22.
22. California Citrograph, May 1925, 236;.
23. California Citrograph, Jan. 1926, 85;.
24. US Department of Commerce, International Trade in Citrus Fruits, 38;.
25. Jorge Palafox Gamir, "Estructura de la exportatión y distribution de beneficios: La naranja en el País Valenciano, 1920-1930, " Revista de Historia Económica 1:2 (1983): 339-51.
26. In California, oranges required about 156 man-hours per acre in 1939, Morilla et al., '"Horn of Plenty, '" 321. The average labor cost per acre was $86.90 in 1926-27, California Citrograph, Apr. 1929, 228.
27. California Citrograph, May 1930, 306;.
28. Senate Committee on Labor and Welfare, California 's Farm Labor Problems, Part I (Sacramento: Senate of the State of California, 1961), 262;.
29. Bellver, Esbozo, 168-69.
30. According to the Italian agriculturalist, Gaetano Briganti, the quality of the oranges and wages were approximately the same in Italy and Spain, but production costs were higher in the former because its fully productive groves only yielded an average of 189 boxes per acre and a maximum of 314 boxes. Federico Sierra, Producción y exportación mundial de agrios (Valencia: Federación de Exportadores de Naranjas, 1934), 16-17.
31. California Citrograph, Feb. 1928, 143;.
32. US Department of Commerce, International Trade in Citrus Fruits, 38;.
33. José Bellver Mustieles, La naranja española en el mundo (Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones Agrarias, 1928).
34. While in 1950 orange and mandarin trees covered 195 thousand acres in Spain, in 2003 there were 628 thousand acres. Technical progress has made it possible to create groves in places where it would have been economically out of the question to do so in the first half of the twentieth century. Samuel Garrido, Treballar en comu. El cooperativisme agrari a Espanya1900-1936 (Valencia: Edicions Alfons el Magnànim, Institució Valenciana d'Estudis i Investigació: Generalitat Valenciana, Diputació Pronvicial de València, 1996), 254-61.
35. Federico Barrachina, La Crisis naranjera: Sus causas y sus remedios (Castellón: Impresiones Jose Armengot, 1908), 6.
36. Figure 3 shows exports, but in the 1920s exports always accounted for about 90 percent of the crop output. Luis Rosón Pérez, La riqueza citricola espanola: datos y reflexiones sobre una politico econdmica (Madrid: Graf. Infante, 1948), 41;.
37. Garrido, Treballar en comú, 261;.
38. Diario de Castellón, May 5, 1926, 1.
39. In the mid-1920s La Plana produced about 8.9 percent of the world's oranges and mandarins, and between 1927 and 1931 it exported almost the same number of boxes (8.2 million annually) as the joint number (8.4 million) exported by the United States, Italy, and Palestine.
40. California Citrograph, Feb. 1928, 140;.
41. Font de Mora, Comercio de los agrios espaholes, (Valencia: Tipografía Moderna, 1938), 206-11;.
42. Bellver, Esbozo, 170-97.
43. California Citrograph, June 1931, 357.
44. Nephtune Fogelberg and A. W. McKay, The Citrus Industry and the California Fruit Growers Exchange System (Washington, DC: Farm Credit Administration, 1940), 52-53;.
45. Douglas Sackman, Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
46. California Citrograph, Feb. 1928, 140.
47. Between 1900 and 1936 the Valencian orange-producing area suffered at least sixteen frosts, which in most cases affected a small portion of the orange acreage. Vicente Abad, Historia de la naranja, 1781-1939 (Valencia: Comite de la Gestión de la exportación de Frutos Cítricos, 1984), 68, 306.
48. Manuel Lassala, Nuestra exportación de naranja (Valencia: Imprenta Vila, 1908), 135, 127;.
49. California Citrograph, Feb. 1928, 140; Nov. 1930, 6.
50. Carlos García-Gisbert, Cultivos de regadio en Levante (Madrid: Marin & Campo, 1933), 13-15, 31.
51. Vicente Fontavella, La Huerta de Gandía (Zaragoza: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1952), 191.
52. Carlos García-Gisbert, Estudio sobre la exportación de la naranja espanola en el Reino Unido (Valencia: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1940), 15;.
53. Hazen, Citrus Industry, 52, 27.
54. Jose Granell, ed., Los cítricos en España, I (Madrid: Confederación Española de Cajas de Ahorros, 1974), 255;.
55. Vincente Abad, Historia de la naranja, 1940-1962 (Valencia: Comite de la Gestión de la exportación de Frutos Cltricos, 1988), 373-76.