Pineapples in Paradise

What comes to mind when you think of Hawai'i? Paradise, right? Sun, sand, surf, warm breezes . . . I'm with you.

Okay, but what about Hawaiian food? My top three: pineapple, macadamia nuts, and poi. (Not that I've ever had poi, but too much television has undoubtedly shaped my perceptions.)

But Hawai'i is no longer paradise for the pineapple. That industry, so closely tied with many Americans' vision of Hawai'i, is showing signs of struggle.

In 2006, Del Monte planted its last crop of pineapple, citing the expense of growing in Hawai'i as the prime reason for shutting down operations after 90 years in the islands. Their departure leaves just two pineapple companies in the state, Dole Food Hawai'i and Maui Pineapple Co.

But last year, the latter shuttered its pineapple cannery, the last one in the U.S. The closure brought an end to an era for many Hawaiians, but the company remains, redirecting its attention to fresh fruit and juice in an effort to stay profitable.

The bottom line talks loudly. Growers in Thailand, the Philippines, Brazil, China, India and Costa Rica can produce the fruit more cheaply, thrusting these countries to the top of list of suppliers worldwide (XLS|41 KB). As a result, the pineapple might become more symbol than reality in Hawai'i. Only time -- and the market -- will tell.

But in honor of pineapple's long, deep history in Hawai'i, and in conjunction with Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, let me point you to a couple of unique resources from the Center for Oral History at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa that celebrate this fantastic fruit and the people who've brought it to us for decades.

The first, a short video clip (Quicktime | 4.4 MB), shows Venicia Guiala, a former pineapple field worker, demonstrating how she prepared for work in the hot, dusty pineapple fields. If you prefer, you can read the transcript, but I heartily recommend the video. Seeing Mrs. Guiala putting on her scarves, goggles and hat conveys more strongly than the words how difficult and uncomfortable that job must be.

The second provides a short introduction to the Center's oral history project on Women Workers in Hawai'i's Pineapple Industry, a combination of narrative and oral history excerpts.

But for a more contemporary twist on pineapple processing, check out this clip from YouTube. The music makes it an almost mesmerizingly peaceful experience. (Though I'd appreciate someone telling me what the song "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" has to do with peeling and coring pineapple.)

Finally, if you haven't given much thought to the role Asian-Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have played and continue to play in our country's agricultural endeavors, jump over to NAL's site on Asian Pacific Americans in agriculture. Among many other things, you can learn from the resources there the unique niche Chinese immigrants filled in 1850s California; the key role Filipinos played in the formation of the United Farm Workers; and the impact of Alien Land Laws on Japanese immigrant farmers.

Aloha.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Biography and Food and Nutrition and History of Agriculture and Marketing and Trade on May 06, 2008 EST | Permalink

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Happy Birthday, Abe!

Okay, so it is a bit odd to wish happy birthday to someone who has been dead for almost 143 years, but I have my reasons.

No, I'm not a Lincoln groupie, though I do live just a few miles from some key Lincoln sites -- the White House, Ford's Theatre, the Lincoln Memorial, and Lincoln's cottage among them. (The latter, Lincoln family's summer retreat, was declared a national monument in 2000, and is set to open to the public in just a few days.)

But besides my tourist connections to ol' Abe, I work in the Abraham Lincoln Building for a Library and a Department he established in 1862 (something I blogged about back in December). That, my friends, is the real reason for today's entry -- Abe's seminal role in making agriculture what it is today.

Interestingly enough though, Abe considered his own connection to things agricultural rather weak. Sure, he grew up on small farms in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, but in an address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in 1859, he described his own agricultural knowledge with some self-deprecation:

I suppose it is not expected of me to impart to you much specific information on agriculture. You have no reason to believe and, do not believe, that I possess it; if that were what you seek in this address, any one of your own number or class would be more able to furnish it.

Nevertheless, Lincoln goes on to offer comments on improving agricultural productivity, increasing yield and maximizing labor. And he eloquently reflects upon the intellectual challenges agriculture brings, encouraging those present to pursue education:

No other human occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought as agriculture. I know of nothing so pleasant to the mind, as the discovery of anything which is at once new and valuable -- nothing which so lightens and sweetens toil, as the hopeful pursuit of such discovery. And how vast, and how varied a field is agriculture, for such discovery. The mind, already trained to thought, in the country school, or higher school, cannot fail to find there an exhaustless source of profitable enjoyment.

Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure. And not grass alone; but soils, seeds, and seasons -- hedges, ditches, and fences, draining, droughts, and irrigation -- plowing, hoeing, and harrowing -- reaping, mowing, and threshing -- saving crops, pests of crops, diseases of crops, and what will prevent or cure them -- implements, utensils, and machines, their relative merits, and [how] to improve them -- hogs, horses, and cattle -- sheep, goats, and poultry -- trees, shrubs, fruits, plants, and flowers -- the thousand things of which these are specimens -- each a world of study within itself.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to History of Agriculture on February 12, 2008 EST | Permalink

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Your blog is outstanding! Here is an entry from the blog of the Archives of the Sandusky Library if you would care to take a look: http://sanduskyhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=moss+library

Submitted by: Sandusky Library on March 7, 2008 08:22 PM

Six Important Updates You Don't Want to Miss

In just the last two days I've noticed how many of the stories I've addressed over the last two months continue to pop up in the news. Given that, I thought it'd be interesting to see how things have moved on a few of them, or what fresh angles more recent coverage offers.

So, without further ado, here are the updates you don't want to miss:

• Since my October 15 entry on food recalls, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a Food Protection Plan that seeks to identify potential foodborne hazards before they sicken or kill anyone, but the plan isn't impressing Congress. Members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions have made some pretty strong statements indicating that neither it, nor the plan to enhance import safety, goes far enough.


• The potato cyst nematode doesn't seem too interested in joining the Year of the Potato celebration. Instead, it's spoiling the party by spreading to its eighth field in Idaho, threatening crop production there.


• Faster computers are accelerating the pace of discovery, but they're also making it possible to generate more realistic, more accurate and more powerful computer simulations. Such progress validates our October post on schools and industries moving away from using animals for education and experimentation.


• Avocado farmers who have started to regroup after October's wildfires are learning that their crop insurance doesn't cover as much as they thought it would. And even those that can expect some payments might not see money until early 2009.


• The farm bill has stalled on its way through the Senate, and there's really no telling where this one's gonna end up. Today word hit that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would be filing a cloture motion this afternoon. Such a motion, if passed, would limit any further debate on the farm bill to 30 hours, but a similar attempt a few weeks ago failed to get the 60 votes required for passage.


• "Sometimes it pays to read the old literature." So said Dr. Peter Palese, a researcher who determined why winter is flu season. And though I've not written a lick about the flu, I thought the lesson Dr. Palese offers to be a timely reminder that some ideas have been thunk before, which was, in fact, the main point behind the Starting Right with Turkeys entry. The Web holds valuable, historical stuff. Make use of it.

If you have more updates to add, feel free to send 'em along.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Animals and Emergency Response and Farm Bill and Food and Nutrition and History of Agriculture and Plants and Crops on December 05, 2007 EST | Permalink

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Seven Score and Six Years Ago Today

Yesterday and today are important days in the history of the United States Department of Agriculture, and I'm betting most folks don't even know it.

What's the big deal?

On December 2, 1861, 146 years ago yesterday, the 37th Congress set in writing three significant pieces of legislation.

• The first established a Department of Agriculture within the Government.
• The second, later known as the Homestead Act, provided 160 acres of land to any American or prospective citizen over the age of 21 who satisfied certain criteria.
• And the third, the Morrill Land Grant College Act, granted Federal land to the states for colleges of agriculture and the mechanical arts.

Agriculture, confessedly the largest interest of the nation, has not a department nor a bureau, but a clerkship only, assigned to it in the Government. While it is fortunate that this great interest is so independent in its nature as to not have demanded and extorted more from the Government, I respectfully ask Congress to consider whether something more can not be given voluntarily with general advantage.

Annual reports exhibiting the condition of our agriculture, commerce, and manufactures would present a fund of information of great practical value to the country. While I make no suggestions as to details, I venture the opinion that an agricultural and statistical bureau might profitably be organized.

Despite the apparent wholesale agreement on the matter, it took a while for these ideas to gestate fully. Lincoln did not sign either of the first two acts into law until May 1862, with the Morrill Act waiting until July of that year.

Despite the delay, all three laws deeply shaped the face of this country and of agriculture. In fact, the law that outlined the Department's creation still remains the basic authority for the Department today, establishing its basic mission:

To acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants.

So, though it's not quite time to say "Happy Birthday, USDA!" perhaps we can acknowledge today as its date of conception, the day when campaign promises and political stumping translated into legislative action, transforming the American West and American history.

To learn more, see what we've got on USDA history or the history of agriculture in general. Or contact our Special Collections for an in-depth look at the documents and manuscripts that have helped mold us, both as a Department and as a nation.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to History of Agriculture on December 03, 2007 EST | Permalink

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Starting Right with Turkeys

Turkey raising offers a most interesting project. It will fascinate your friends who visit you. You will be envied by them, especially as Thanksgiving approaches and you have no worries about having a tasty bird for this feast. The project will offer diversions from the anxieties of office work or business. It can be excellent training for a boy or girl, particularly in 4-H Club work, or any kind of a home project.

Thus opined G. T. Klein in his 1947 publication Starting Right with Turkeys, a product of his days working as an Extension Poultry Husbandman at the Massachusetts State College, Amherst.

The book, a no-nonsense manual on raising turkeys, tackles the practical details of a do-it-yourself backyard turkey project from a time when such a thing was more feasible than most city ordinances make it today. (Though urban chickens are gaining ground, so maybe the pendulum will swing back for turkeys as well.)

Klein's work joins over 1,800 other books and journals in Cornell Library's collection of the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture. The materials there track the evolution of farming, agriculture and rural life through the 19th and 20th centuries, providing a deep look into a social, economic and industrial phenomenon.

But more than that, this early literature records information about sustainable agricultural methods that is still relevant today. It is, in large part (pre-1942, that is), farming without pesticides and chemical fertilizers using techniques that, by their nature, are more "organic," more geared toward ecological balance (even if that contemporary principle wasn't in the forefront back then).

The Library's Alternative Farming Systems Information Center has pulled together a similar collection specifically on organic agriculture called Organic Agriculture Information Access (aka Organic Roots). This budding database contains almost 200 historic USDA publications from before 1942, clearly making what was old new again.

So over this holiday weekend, in between the eating, sleeping and shopping, explore the history of the agricultural field of your liking. You might be surprised by what you find -- a new hobby, new methods or just a way to fascinate your friends (even if the tasty bird you're eating didn't grow up in your own backyard).

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Animals and History of Agriculture and Organic Production on November 21, 2007 EST | Permalink

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