My interest in preparing a study of avocado and complementary crops in northern San Diego County goes back more than 20 years when I became a grower almost by accident. A neighboring friend and fellow grower, Reinhold Gerber, in what was then called North Carlsbad, exposed me to our fine farm advisor, Don Gustafson. In my first meeting with Don he supplied me with many university pamphlets, and I recall thinking that the material should be organized under one cover that would also include the experiences of growers in the field.
Several years later I found myself living on our ranch in the Lilac area and, being employed by what later became the Johnson Agricultural Corp., I held a number of different billets for Wilbur L. (Bill) Johnson at different times. Near the midpoint in my “Johnson career” I operated a tool crib and supply activity, which brought me into direct contact with our grower customers. One of those customers was Mrs. Helen Knox, who found that I was able to provide satisfactory answers to her many questions about the industry and grove management. She also noted that I was in attendance at most grower and industry meetings. Our friendship became strong even though she chided me that I had not prepared in pamphlet form the information that might be useful to neophyte growers who were our customers.
I presented her suggested publication ideas to the Johnson Agricultural Corporation’s General Manager, Cmdr. Harold S. (Hal) Keith, U.S.N. (Ret.), who urged me to proceed forthwith under the aegis of Johnson. Having only the most modest experience at writing, leftover from the late ’30s when I had an article published, I didn’t know that I could not do it. When the manuscript was roughed in, though I had not reread the second half once, Cmdr. Keith called for it because of a printing commitment and I was assured that all the grammatical corrections would be made. This three-page tract was well received and has been revised twice since the original printing; I feel very comfortable with it. Growers tell me that they have found it helpful to them, which is gratifying to me.
In the spring of 1977, Mr. Richard J. (Dick) Burchall came to the Johnson offices to make inquiries about our company’s newsletter, to which I had made minor contributions. Dick had a publishing background and was new to avocados and to Fallbrook. In the course of our first conversation he recognized a need for an industry magazine that you now know as the “avocado Grower” and that in little over five years has become a new and very important voice in the world of the avocado fraternity. While the magazine was to provide a forum for the industry, Dick wanted me to put under one cover a “how to” book that growers could use in understanding the avocado business as well as one that could furnish an historical background. It is my hope that as a grower you will benefit.
It was not long after that spring meeting that Dick met Alan L. Myers, who was fresh out of journalism school, at a church -- of all places -- and set him to work putting the magazine into shape. It was not enough that Alan became our fine and accomplished editor, but he has also provided suitable editorial corrections, suggestions and photography for my fumbling efforts as the contributor of “Midshipman’s Butter For All Hands.” In a short time, additional talented help was required and Ann Fagin signed on in advertising. Of course, any organization worth its salt, such as the “Avocado Grower”, had to have a very fine secretary in the person of Charlotte Weise.
In the second year of publication Alan moved up to the new Avocado Commission as a vice president and, happily for the magazine, another talented young man, Mark E. Affleck, was recruited to the editor’s billet, an office that he fills with distinction.
When it was determined that it would be inappropriate for the magazine to act as publisher for an avocado “how to” handbook, I approached my long time friend, Paul H. Thomson, to inquire if his Bonsall Publications would have an interest in publishing such a book. Paul, as a horticulturalist and a co-founder of the California Rare Fruit Growers, recognized a need for such a work, especially by new growers entering the industry, and agreed to give it the light of day.
As originally envisaged, Paul was merely to edit the manuscript and then publish it, an undertaking that would involve little work on his part. As work progressed, it soon became apparent that he would be not only a collaborator but also a coauthor. For his efforts in reviewing the original work published by the Avocado Grower magazine under the title of “Midshipman’s Butter For All Hands” and in re-organizing the material and suggesting changes and additions, I am very grateful. Readers will recognize his contributions for their clarity and lucidity. It has required the combined efforts of both of us over a period of almost two and a half years to prepare the manuscript for publication. It is sincerely hoped that the reader will benefit from this collection of useful material.
Much credit must be acknowledged to my good, cherished, and esteemed friends Jane B. Lorenz, C.P.A., and James K. Lorenz for their encouragement and specific aid and suggestions.
There are two others who in their separate ways have made unique contributions to this effort. First, the distaff side of my household, Joyce, has aided me by reviewing the work, giving spelling corrections on demand, and supplying great moral support and encouragement for this effort to help growers. Second, and only because fate put him last in chronological order, the holder of my real estate license, my broker and good friend, Joe Mecaro, who through his forbearance has permitted his offices to be used for many magazine and book related activities.
The purpose of this effort is to help orient the newcomer to the avocado industry and to remind and refresh the experienced grower’s memory of a little of our industry’s flavor and excitement.
Over the years the avocado industry has attracted those special and unique individuals who can see the beauty and charm of developing harsh lands into fine and productive groves of that wonderful “love fruit,” the avocado. This writer believes that it is quite possible for a man to have a love affair with a woman, but equally possible to have a love affair with an avocado tree. For me the charge may be bigamy, but I am wedded to the ‘Reed’ and ‘Zutano’ varieties for practical as well as aesthetic reasons.
So, gentle readers, go forth and prosper knowing that the book is the distillation of the knowledge of our farm advisors, old time growers, packinghouse field men, grove managers, and C.A.A.B. and C.A.C. members’ long experiences.
“THINK AVOCADOS”
Frank D. Koch
145 Cerco Rosado
San Marcos, California 92069
31 March 1983
“Midshipman’s Butter For All Hands” by Frank D. Koch appeared in the Avocado Grower magazine as a series of articles copyrighted by Rancher Publications. The series started in the first issue of October 1977 and ran for a total of 19 issues through April 1979.
In a letter dated 9 February 1983, Rancher Publications released to Frank D. Koch the copyright on the series.
Portions of articles have been excerpted from the Midshipman series and appear in the Avocado Grower’s Handbook with the permission of Rancher Publications, P.O. Box 2047, Vista, California 92083, publisher of the Avocado Grower magazine. Rancher Publications, and its assigns, are not responsible for the contents of the Avocado Grower’s Handbook.
Material from the Avocado Grower’s Handbook may be reproduced providing proper credit is given.
Historical records do not indicate the exact date the avocado was introduced into California, but it is thought the introduction may have occurred around 1850. There was a tree planted near a building of the Mission Santa Cruz that was probably the oldest known avocado tree in the state. (Substituted “was” because it doesn’t exist anymore, right? Sm)The California State Agricultural Society Report for 1856 stated that Thomas J. White grew the avocado in Los Angeles. The oldest living tree is found on the University of California, Berkeley campus and was planted in 1879. In other southern California locations, avocados were planted by various people who introduced and planted seed from Mexico and Guatemala. (1)
For purposes of this endeavor, the avocado industry began in California in 1911, when Frederick O. Popenoe sent Carl Schmidt into Mexico to seek better varieties for his nursery, “The West India Gardens” of Altadena, California.
Mr. Schmidt was compelled to tell and retell the story of his fortuitous discovery of the Fuerte avocado. “Popenoe was a nut -- an imaginative, idealistic nut without which our nation would suffer and certainly make little progress. In 1911, his current nutty idea was that California would be a good place to grow avocados -- and that people would like them.” (2)
At that time, Mexico had no commercial avocado production, so the hunter of avocado budwood first searched the marketplaces for fruit that showed promise and then sought out the tree. This was the case for Schmidt, who located what turned out to be the Fuerte as a dooryard tree in Atlixco, Mexico. Budwood from this parent tree became the backbone of the California industry.
He told the story like this:
Two years later came the big freeze. (1913-14 Ed.) In the spring when we began to take stock of damage, it was the Fuerte that came through and it was the only avocado that survived. It thus proved itself adaptable to our temperatures.
In 1911, when Carl Schmidt found the seedling tree growing in the back yard of Señor Le Blanc in Atlixco, Mexico, the tree was so sturdy and produced abundant fruit of such superior quality that Le Blanc had given it the favored designation of “avocado De Chino,” after the excellent silk imported from China.
The following year, J.T. ’Grandpa’ Whedon, a resident of Yorba Linda in Orange County, decided to sell the pigs he had been raising to supplement his pension as a retired superintendent of the Ohio Street Railway Company and become an avocado grower -- even before he ever tasted one. He purchased five acres of land, which so upset his wife that she refused to move to the ranch with him and continued to maintain a separate residence.
Wife or no wife, Grandpa Whedon ordered forty avocado trees from the West India Gardens. All were types that were local favorites but none were from the buds of Señor LeBlanc’s dooryard tree. The trees were to be picked up the following spring.
As fate would have it, that January was extremely cold and the damage was extensive, especially in the Southern California area, with temperatures as low as 12 degrees Fahrenheit. All the young trees in the nursery were frozen except for the trees that had been budded to Carl Schmidt’s find from Atlixco. Mr. Popenoe, noting their hardiness, named them ’Fuerte’ after the Spanish word for strong.
The following March, Grandpa Whedon hitched his old white horse to the buckboard and drove to the nursery to bring his trees home with him. When he arrived, he was told that all of the trees that he had ordered, and paid for, had been killed in the freeze.
“When he demanded his money back, Popenoe was forced to tell him that his money was only part of the over $100,000 that the nursery had lost during the freeze, and that there was no money to return. Finally, Grandpa Whedon agreed to accept the un-tried scrawny little trees and took them back home to begin the world’s first Fuerte avocado grove.
When his orchard came into production he had standing orders from hotels in Los Angeles and San Francisco who were willing to take all he could ship, paying as much as $12.00 per dozen. Because of the Fuerte’s cold resistance and high quality fruit, the buds from his trees were in great demand, and in some years, he realized as much as $6,000 from buds alone (3).
From such fluky experiences like Grandpa Whedon’s have come many of the varieties we use today to build our exciting avocado industry.
Demand for seed was also high in those days. Gil Henry of the Henry Avocado Co. in Escondido, California, spins an avocado yarn that his father told him during this same time frame. According to Henry you had to turn in a seed from one avocado before you could buy another one. That’s because in those days old seed was the principle source for nursery stock.
The California Avocado Association was organized in 1915 and the name changed to California Avocado Society in 1940. One of the chief founders was J. Eliot Coit, Ph.D., who was one of the guiding lights of the industry until the early 1970s.
The California Avocado Society -- old, prestigious and professional, with no interest other than the betterment of our industry -- has membership that spans the globe, wherever people care about avocados. The Society has been the building vehicle and the principal forum, through its annual yearbook, in the quest for newer and better varieties as well as better orchard management and cultural practices. It has also had a keen interest in solving the root rot and sun blotch problems and has been the common meeting ground for all segments of the industry. The Society’s yearbook has long been the only Bible our industry has had, and growers anxiously await each new issue.
From these beginnings in the San Gabriel Valley, we can follow the avocado trail to the coastal strip between Encinitas and Oceanside and back inland to the Escondido and Fallbrook areas. After the end of World War II, there was a renewed interest in avocados. Much new acreage was brought into production until the industry had a record large crop in 1959-1960, resulting in very low returns to the growers. It was in that period that this writer became smitten with avocados, becoming a true aficionado, and can recall that California average returns per acre were $365.00 for that crop year. For the crop year ’78-’79, returns were up to $2,136.00, an increase of over four and one-half times the value of the crop 10 years previously (4).
Many growers attribute the turn around in returns of the early 60s to two important factors:
A. The grower’s “bootstrap” efforts to help themselves using the “marketing order” mechanism, which permits growers to band together under state law to tax themselves to promote their product. That order became effective in 1961 under the name of the California Avocado Advisory Board (CAAB), comprised today as follows: 2 handler co-op members, 2 independent handler members, 5 grower co-op members and 5 independent grower members. In the last six years there has also been a fifteenth member added to the Board who is appointed by the Governor to represent the public interest. It is the function of this seat holder to act as a liaison between the Board and the public for the exchange of information. The first public member appointed by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr., was Mrs. Mary Means, a home economist and consumer counselor for the San Diego Gas and Electric Company, now retired. Gwen Romig has been appointed by the Governor to succeed Mary Means as the second public member and is active under the new California Avocado Commission (CAC).
Growers felt stifled under the marketing order and formed the California Avocado Commission (CAC) to perform the promotional functions of the Advisory Board, which operates essentially as a private corporation funded by industry growers, but retains the police powers of the state to enforce the collection of assessments from growers to operate the commission. The 1978-79 crop year was the first year that the CAC was used to advertise and promote the crop rather than the old marketing order.
In support of this move, the Calavo newsletter “Together” of June 7, 1977, made the following observation:
. . . Inflexibility of the marketing order system . . . a system attempting to blanket thirty-four diverse commodities . . . has made it increasingly difficult to formulate the type of specialized advertising and promotion program necessary to meet the needs peculiar to our expanding avocado industry.
Growers have added to the marketing order’s mission. CAAB has been asked to seek solutions for the vexing problems of Phytophthora cinnamomi (root rot) as well as other diseases. This is being accomplished under its subunit, the Production Research Advisory Committee (PRAC). Currently, growers are taxing themselves at the rate of 4.7% of the price received for fruit. Of that, 4.5% goes to CAAB/CAC for marketing; the other .2% goes toward production research.
B. The second factor helping to turn the industry around was the emergence of the Hass variety to prominence. With Hass as the summer fruit and Fuerte for the winter, the industry had year-round quality fruit that would help fill gaps in the production marketing calendar.
The Fuerte variety of avocado had long been the standard of the industry and was promoted in all of the advertising as a green-skinned fruit by those who sold the fruit to the public. It would take a formidable advertising campaign to acquaint the public with the merits of a dark-skinned fruit. The Hass variety was discovered in 1926 and patented in 1935 and began to attract the attention of several growers with an experimental turn of mind. Among these, Harlan B. Griswold planted a large acreage of Hass in the San Luis Rey Heights area of Fallbrook and found that it produced consistent crops of fine quality fruit. During the 1950s, he recommended Hass to any and all growers who were considering an avocado planting.
With the advent of the California Avocado Advisory Board and its campaign to re-educate the public to accept dark-skinned avocados in the summer and green-skinned avocados in the fall and winter, the marketplace resistance to dark-skinned avocados was largely overcome by the late 1960s. Advertising was supported by the fact that Hass is an avocado that the growers can be proud of. It ships well, has a good shelf life, and is of fine eating quality. It has now replaced the Fuerte as the standard of the industry by virtue of an increased supply around the calendar, with harvesting during ten months of the year.
In any discussion of avocados, it should be noted that while the lion’s share of production is in San Diego County, there are significant volumes of fruit produced in Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Riverside counties, with lesser amounts produced in Orange, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Clara Counties and in the San Joaquin Valley.
Florida’s avocado industry, an important factor in avocados that are marketed east of the Mississippi, must be reckoned with. In recent years, Florida avocados, which are still known as “alligator pears,” have come into the California market because of their successful lawsuit against the law requiring California avocados to contain 8% oil at maturity, which had formerly excluded Florida fruit. The Florida growers, who use dates and fruit sizes rather than oil testing to determine maturity, are particularly pleased to bring their fruit into California in the late summer and fall period when returns are historically higher. Florida operates under a federal marketing order. Californians traditionally have had little fruit during that time slot. At the present time, that picture has changed because of the increased plantings of Hass in the Santa Barbara and Ventura regions.
California growers are interested in avocado production elsewhere in the world where avocados can be grown, but there seems to be a large domestic demand for resources in those countries.
The largest packer and shipper “Calavo,” a cooperative, was created by the California Avocado Association about 45 years ago to tackle the job of marketing their members’ fruit and has been a leader in the industry ever since. In most recent years, Calavo has controlled about 50% of the California avocado production.
For those readers who may be historical buffs, the William T. Horne Memorial Library in the Agriculture Library on the campus of the University of California at Riverside, has enough avocado reports and articles to keep the fan amused for many a long winter’s afternoon. The library was named for an early avocado researcher.
The San Diego County segment of the industry has been blessed in many ways -- good soil and climate conditions and imported Colorado River water - but also in a personal way, by the outstanding contribution of our Co-operative Extension Farm Advisor, Don Gustafson. This writer has the good fortune to have had a most cordial relationship with him in excess of twenty years. He has diligently monitored the ebb and flow of the industry in his more than 30 years of service to growers.
I recall a remark Don made at the 1962 Avocado Institute meeting in Fallbrook after some low return years for growers. He felt that “ours was not a dying industry,” and offered strong words of encouragement when they were most needed by the industry. He has always provided the kind of support appreciated by growers. For the proof of his statement, we have only to reflect on the vast acreages of newly developed lands in the Lilac, Valley Center, Pauma Valley, Rainbow, and Fallbrook areas. If this proof is not enough, it is a simple matter to gaze over the county line into Rancho California in Riverside County for even more potential production of avocado. Don knows the growers are grateful for his efforts by the kudos that have come his way. It might not be unreasonable to suggest that he is at least the midwife, if not the father, of drip irrigation for avocados in California -- to the benefit of all.
REFERENCES CITED
1. Butterfield, Harry M. A History of Subtropical Fruits and Nuts in California. Univ. of Calif. Agr. Extension Service, September 1963, page 6.
2. California Avocado Society, Yearbook 1970-71, page 6.
3. Poole, Dwight and Mildred Poole. From Pigs to Riches. Calif. Avo. Soc. Yrbk. 1967, p. 25.
4. Economic Trends in the California Avocado Industry. Univ. of Calif. Leaflet No. 2356, Revised October 1980.