The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture

In the produce section of every American chain grocery—from Maine to Florida, and down to the southwestern border—consumers will find a bounty of glossy, colorful Washington apples tempting their eyes. But this was not always the case. A century ago, apple eaters in the eastern cities would have found most of the apples available for sale had more regional origins. In Amanda Van Lanen's The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture, we learn that 69 percent of the apples produced in the United States in 2020 came from Washington State. How did apples from the northwestern corner of the country come to be so ubiquitous across the nation? That is the question Van Lanen seeks to answer in this fascinating account.Large-scale commercial apple production did not take off in Washington State until the early twentieth century. By that time New York, New England, Virginia, and the Midwest had a robust and mature apple industry that provided enough apples to meet consumer demands across the eastern half of the country, as well as a surplus that found markets in Europe. The obstacles to success for Washington's early commercial growers were not insubstantial. There was abundant land in the high deserts east of the Cascades for the planting of trees. The soils and the annual temperature ranges were more than adequate for apple growing, but rainfall was scarce. Expensive irrigation projects were necessary to water this desert, and road and railroad expansion was required to get the apples to distant markets. "Washington apples cost more to produce than eastern apples," Van Lanen tells us. "Irrigation and transportation to urban markets over three thousand miles away added to the cost of production. Why should a consumer pay three times as much for a Washington apple, when local apples could be purchased for a fraction of the price?" (4) Despite these barriers, the state's apple growers found success, and "today, Washington is synonymous with apples, just as Idaho is with potatoes, and Georgia with peaches" (4).Chapter 1 surveys the introduction and earliest plantings of apples in the state and the first starts at commercial production during the last decades of the nineteenth century. The boom-and-bust cycle of the regional mining industry meant sharp spikes in the demand for apples were followed by equally dramatic drops when mines were not operating. It was an unsteady market from which to build a sustainable industry. Chapter 2 addresses the complicated relationships among railroads, private irrigation companies, and real-estate developers as they sought to develop the Yakima and Wenatchee valleys, and their mixed success in creating a landscape where orchards might succeed. Chapter 3 examines the struggles novice apple growers faced in developing the orchard management practices necessary for success. The growing problem of pest management was among the most vexing challenges. Chapter 4 explores the challenges of picking, packing, and shipping necessary to get the fruit to market, including the problem of labor and the innovation of the softwood apple crate, which set the state's fruit apart from the barreled apples of the East. Chapters 5 and 6 examine marketing and the economic challenges depression and war imposed. A final chapter provides a brief survey of developments since the 1950s, an era that Van Lanen describes as one of "hyperindustrialization," characterized by consolidation, new chemical inputs, and new dwarfing rootstocks, among other innovations. Yet more work needs to be done on this important period in the history of the apple, which deserves a full-length study of its own, as changes in labor practices and storage technologies, increasing consumer interest in organic alternatives, and the integration into global apple markets dramatically transformed the Washington apple industry in these years. Throughout these chapters, Van Lanen introduces the stories of specific Washington growers and industry advocates, which helps to ground the larger changes she describes in personal experience.The Washington Apple is an important contribution to the history of orchard agriculture in America, a subject that has received much less attention than the history of grains and other annual crops. This book is useful to historians of agriculture, business, and the environment, and it would also be a suitable work to include in undergraduate and graduate classes in these fields.