1911 Pomona College Journal of Economic Botany, Vol. I, No. 3, September 



The Development of the Avocado 

 Industry 



F. W. POPENOE, ALTADENA^ CALIFORNIA 



Within the past twelve months interest in growing the avocado has increased 

 many fold. The feeling has now become general among well-informed orchard- 

 ists and nurserymen that this fruit is destined to play an important part in the 

 economic horticulture of Southern California ; and many wise growers already 

 foresee great promise for this new industry. The adaptability of the avocado to 

 our climatic conditions has become convincingly apparent^ and belief is growing 

 into conviction that it is to rival the orange as a semi-tropic product. As a future 

 food product it is unquestionably an important factor to be reckoned with. Econ- 

 omists who have the ability to grasp matters horticultural are figuring the avocado 

 into the future food supply of the country at large as a competitor of meat^ and 

 are estimating its possibilities for replacing animal products with a wholesome 

 and delicious vegetable food. As eminent and practical a horticulturist as Mr. 

 Parker Earle, formerly president of the American Pomological society^ is con- 

 vinced of an immense future for the avocado. In a recent letter to the editor of 

 the Pacific Garden^ Mr. Earle says: "We cannot help wondering, as we look 

 ahead for a hundred years, how people will live — what they- will eat — when there 

 are four hundred millions to be fed out of the land that now supports one hundred 

 millions. With this great density of population, will there be room for producing 

 much animal food in that time ? Will it not become a necessity of existence to 

 utilize all of the land in a way that will yield the greatest tonnage of human food? 



"An acre of land can produce, let us say, one quarter of a ton of beef, or 

 other animal food, per year. It can produce one ton, or possibly two tons, of food 

 in wheat, or corn, or rice. It can produce five, ten, or possibly twenty tons of an 

 incomplete food ration in the form of apples, or grapes, or bananas. And there 

 may be from one to two tons or more of very rich food in the form of nuts — 

 notably pecans — from one acre of land. But with avocados there would seem to 

 be a possible yield of food of very high nutritive value in tonnage equal to apples 

 with their low nutritive value." Mr. Earle goes on to state that if men can pro- 

 duce many tons of food of best value from an acre of land in trees that can only 

 yield a fraction of a ton in the form of animal food, it is pretty certain that they 

 are going to plant trees. The crowding of men together in dense population will 

 compel this. "In primitive conditions men turned to animals for food. It was a 

 state of savagery. We are outgrowing it. Very soon there will be no room for 

 animals that are grown to be eaten. It is compulsory. It is nature''^ way. We 

 must get our food in greatest quantities from a minimum area of land. And we 

 must have food containing the same elements that animals have been giving us. . 

 Among these substitutes does not the avocado offer itself as one of large possible 

 importance?" 



The one answer that can be made to Mr. Earle's inquiry is — it does. 



