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The biggest peach myth in America
The biggest peach myth in America
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0:00
This is a peach. Soft, fuzzy, sweet, and
0:03
oh so delicious.
0:04
>> When you get a really good peach, it's a
0:06
tremendous kind of sensory experience.
0:08
>> The US produces 600,000 tons of this
0:11
stone fruit each year, and it's
0:13
synonymous with one place, Georgia.
0:16
>> That's one of those Georgia peaches.
0:17
>> Georgia peaches. Those are considered
0:19
the best.
0:20
>> Look at your outfit. You look like a
0:21
little Georgia peach.
0:23
>> It's on license plates and road signs
0:25
and at the end of almost every film
0:27
you've ever watched. There's even an
0:29
entire county named after it. But here's
0:31
the thing. Despite its nickname, Georgia
0:33
doesn't even produce the most peaches in
0:35
the US.
0:35
>> So, there's an active mythmaking. It's
0:37
really not a southern fruit in
0:39
particular.
0:39
>> So, how did Georgia become the peach
0:42
state?
0:46
A peach is what's called a stone fruit,
0:48
meaning there's a hard pit at the
0:49
center. There are cling stones, which
0:51
cling tightly to the pit, and free
0:53
stones, which pull away cleanly. They
0:55
could be yellow or white, fuzzy or
0:57
smooth. Those are nectarine. Same fruit,
0:59
just no fuzz. And like most crops grown
1:01
in the US, peaches came from somewhere
1:03
else. The earliest evidence we have for
1:06
peach usage dates back to China around
1:09
7,000 years ago. They came to Europe via
1:12
the Silk Road, and so they acquired the
1:14
scientific name Prunis Persa because it
1:16
was assumed they originally came from
1:18
Persia. From there, Spanish explorers
1:20
carried peach pits across the Atlantic
1:22
in the 1500s and planted them across
1:24
Florida, where Native Americans used
1:26
them for food and medicine and spread
1:28
them up the coast. So, by the time
1:30
English colonists arrived in Virginia in
1:32
the early 1600s, peaches were abundant,
1:34
but they weren't glamorous.
1:36
>> Most peach usage seems to have been for
1:40
uh foraging hogs and making cider and
1:43
brandy.
1:43
>> It tastes like peach brandy to me.
1:45
>> No one was calling it a state symbol. It
1:48
would take a war, a broken economy, and
1:50
a new generation of horiculturalists to
1:52
turn that idea into an industry. When
1:54
the Civil War ended, Georgia's economy
1:56
was shattered because cotton had built
1:58
the Old South. There's a really strong
2:01
push uh among a lot of newspaper men and
2:03
sort of upper class folks in the South
2:05
to develop a new reputation, like a new
2:08
face for the South. There was also in
2:10
Georgia really active horicultural
2:12
society. So there's a lot of language
2:13
like Queen Peach is dethroning King
2:16
Cotton to sort of say Georgia is doing
2:18
something different. We're we're making
2:20
a new kind of agricultural civilization.
2:22
Peaches were already growing in Georgia,
2:24
but getting them to market was the
2:26
issue. They bruise easily and spoil
2:28
fast. So if Georgia was going to build a
2:31
new identity around this fruit, it
2:32
needed a peach that could travel. Enter
2:35
Samuel Rump.
2:36
>> In Georgia, the most important
2:38
commercial peach variety was developed.
2:40
Uh, it was called the Alberta by Samuel
2:42
Henry Rump down in Marshallville.
2:44
>> Rumpt likely crossed Chinese cling with
2:46
a yellow freestone known as Bley
2:48
Crawford.
2:49
>> However, he was never able to provide a
2:51
clear genealogy for the Alberta. He
2:53
named it after his wife. That was also
2:55
kind of an important move for uh, you
2:57
know, a southern gentleman.
2:58
>> And at the same time Rump was
3:00
experimenting in his orchards, something
3:02
else was changing.
3:03
>> The development of refrigerated
3:05
transport. That was a key part of
3:06
getting the commercial industry going in
3:08
the south. Georgia really is kind of the
3:10
first peach growing region that's
3:12
shipping at a considerable distance to
3:14
some of the big marketplaces of the
3:16
north. There were at one time more
3:17
Alberta peaches grown than any other
3:19
fruit variety.
3:20
>> By the early 1900s, Georgia was known
3:23
for its peaches. Labels on crates
3:25
shipped north featured the word Georgia
3:27
front and center.
3:28
>> Mon Georgia hosts a big peach carnival
3:31
in the 1890s that culminates in the
3:33
1920s in Peach County. Peaches were
3:35
becoming something people in Georgia
3:37
rallied around. They were pies and
3:39
cobblers and crisps. Even during World
3:42
War I, peach pits were burnt down and
3:44
packed into the filters of gas masks.
3:46
But despite their many uses, peaches
3:48
never really did overtake cotton.
3:50
>> Peaches were never more important than
3:52
cotton economically. As far as I can
3:54
tell, peaches fit kind of handin glove
3:57
with the cotton economy, especially with
3:59
regard to labor.
4:00
>> But the story stuck. More than a century
4:02
after the Alberta peach was introduced.
4:04
Georgia made it official. In 1995, the
4:07
peach became the state fruit. But today,
4:09
Georgia's reputation is bigger than its
4:12
harvest. Speaking of delicious peaches,
4:14
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4:15
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4:46
Stonyfield Organic didn't dictate the
4:48
content of the story, but their support
4:50
made this tasty reporting possible. Now,
4:53
back to peaches. South Carolina and
4:56
California have both overtaken peaches
4:58
and and today California produces by far
5:00
the most peaches in the country. But
5:02
even they're dwarfed by China. China
5:04
produces way more in peaches than
5:05
anybody else in the world. By the 1920s,
5:07
nearly 150,000 acres of peaches were
5:10
planted across the state. But by 2017,
5:12
Georgia just had nearly 12,000 acres of
5:15
peaches left. In Georgia, peaches and
5:17
the people growing them look different
5:19
today. The mostly black labor force that
5:21
powered these early orchards declined
5:23
during the great migration. And modern
5:25
orchards rely heavily on immigrant
5:27
labor, mainly through H2A guest worker
5:30
programs. And labor isn't the only
5:32
challenge. Peaches needed a certain
5:33
amount of chill hours every winter, time
5:35
below 45° to reset and bloom properly in
5:39
the spring. Too much cold and there's
5:41
risk.
5:41
>> If peach trees start to bloom and then
5:43
there's a late freeze, you can lose most
5:46
of your crop. In 2023, some Georgia
5:48
growers reported losing more than 90% of
5:51
their peaches. The season was described
5:53
as disastrous. But despite all this,
5:56
Georgia is still the peach state. At
5:57
that moment when the South was really
5:59
looking for this sort of new reputation,
6:01
a new face, um, peaches were there. They
6:03
were emerging as a major crop. I think
6:06
there's been a continuation of a
6:08
maintenance of the myth
6:09
>> because it turned peaches into a story
6:11
and that lasts longer than any crop ever
6:14
could.
6:15
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6:17
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6:20
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