October 2011 NHC NEWS A Monthly Bulletin of the Northwest Horticultural Council A&P Retail-chain grocery stores are the delivery vehicle to consumers for the almost all commercially harvested fruits.  How did this come about?  A book—The  Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America—issued  this year and authored by Marc Levinson provides  answers backed by facts on this and other questions about the early development years of our nation’s modern food marketing system. A&P pioneered many chain store practices, such as forming in 1924 a produce buying operation, the Atlantic Commission Company, to purchase railroad boxcars of fruits and vegetables directly from farmers.  This was a move to cut out the middle men, the brokers, as well as to control A&Ps transportation costs. The book relates how the Atlantic Commission Company bought fruit: Most produce in those days was sold through local grower associations; when an area’s pea harvest or plum crop came in, individual farmers would haul their output to the association’s warehouse, where it would be auctioned to specialized brokers.  The brokers, in turn, would move the produce in smaller lots through wholesale markets in major cities.  Atlantic Commission Company sometimes joined these auctions, but it could also circumvent them. Unlike the independent brokers, it had agents at the big-city markets in addition to buying offices around the country.  Their close communication enabled it to decide whether, on any given morning, Atlantic Commission would bid at the apple auction run by the Yakima Valley Growers Association in Yakima, Washington; strike private deals with the association or individual apple growers, or buy nothing in Yakima and meet its requirement for apples at the market in Chicago or New York. ¨ A WINTER’s TALE Long before retail chain stores such as A&P, even before the corner grocery, apples, such as the variety Pippins, and other fresh fruits were sold in large cities like London by impoverished specialists known as costermongers. When the author Peter Quennell wrote “Holgarth’s Progress” in 1955 he provided readers with a macabre poem—he discovered it during his researches for his biography on the great 18th century English illustrator William Holgarth—on the icy fate of one of these hawkers of fruit, the costermonger Doll:    Doll ev’ry day had walk’d these treach’rous roads;    Her neck grew warpt beneath autumnal loads    Of various fruit; she now a basket bore.    That head, alas!  Shall basket bear no more…    Ah Doll!  All mortals must resign their breath,    And industry itself submit to death!    The cracking crystal yields, she sinks, she dyes,    Her head, chopt off, from her lost shoulders flies,    Pippins she cryed, but death her voice confounds,    And pip-pip-pip along the ice resounds.” ¨ Travel   Christian Schlect October 2-6 – United Fresh Produce Association’s Washington Public Policy Conference, Washington, D.C. October 13-16 – Meeting of the Minor Crop Farmer Alliand and Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit International Convention and Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia October 17-20 – National Council of Agricultural Employers’ Executive Committee meeting, Washington, D.C. October 31-November 2 – 2011 Annual International Research Conference on Methyl Bromide Alternatives and Emissions Reductions, San Diego, California Mike Willett October 4-6 – Semi-annual meeting of the Biopesticide Industry Alliance, Portland, Oregon. October 10-11 – Meeting of EPA’s Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee, Washington, D.C. October 19-21 – Western Institute for Food Safety and Security’s Meeting on Research Protocols, Sacramento, California. Mark Powers October 2-7 – United Fresh Produce Association’s Washington Public Policy Conference, Washington, D.C. October 27 – Washington State China Relations Council’s Annual Banquet, Seattle, Washington. Deborah Carter October 2-4 – United Fresh Produce Association’s Food Safety and Technology Council meeting, Washington, D.C. ‘The fruit is so beautiful, almost flawless, red and luscious, as we look at it, the trees still bending under the weight of their burden,’ [William E. Dodd} wrote one fine night during the apple harvest.  ‘It all appeals to me.’ Erik Larson In the Garden of Beasts Northwest Horticultural Council 105 South 18th Street, Suite 105 Yakima, Washington 98901, USA Voice: (509) 453-3193, Fax: (509) 457-7615 E-mail general@nwhort.org