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00:00:00democracy, live and on demand. Keep up with the day's biggest
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00:00:35of Good afternoon, my name is
00:00:39Allison Bainbridge and I am thrilled to
00:00:42of welcome you as well
00:00:43of as our authors to Book Passage for
00:00:45of this delicious author event in celebration of Sarah Alaback and Monique
00:00:49Parson's new
00:00:51of book, green
00:00:51a gold, the avocado's remarkable journey from humble
00:00:55of of superfood to
00:00:56of Toast of a of nation. We're joined in conversation with Kate Lee.
00:01:00author of Italian wine, um, this book is a
00:01:04lively and engrossing history
00:01:05of the avocado and the people who
00:01:07of transformed a it into an American obsession, um, I have a
00:01:11confession, avocados are one of my favorite food groups
00:01:14of and I would
00:01:15a include it a list
00:01:16of if I was asked what I
00:01:18of wanted to bring a desert island if I was stranded, it would have
00:01:22in to be avocados, um, something that I was shocked
00:01:25of and dismayay at is my husband and I many years ago traveled to Africa
00:01:29of and of and in East Africa they were throwing away these huge
00:01:33avocados and
00:01:34we said what are you doing and they said oh people don't eat this and
00:01:37of we were just we
00:01:38of were just
00:01:39in appalled um maybe it's changed now since um their social media and they
00:01:43figured out how valuable they are
00:01:45of um set against the rise of southern California as
00:01:48of economic and cultural powerhouse and featuring recipes
00:01:51in including vintage versions of guacamole and avocado toast. green gold
00:01:55of is of an entertaining and far-ranging exploration
00:01:57of the avocados journey to a central place in the American Diet
00:02:01and Global
00:02:02of Imagination. Sarah Alback and Monique Parsons are friends since the third grade,
00:02:06they grew up in Carpenteria, California, where avocados
00:02:09in are part
00:02:09of the landscape. Both graduated from
00:02:12of Princeton University. Sarah is author and historian,
00:02:16specializing
00:02:19of of in architectural history and landscape preservation, and monique is a third generation avocado farmer.
00:02:22She's an award winning journalists and independent radio producer for NPR
00:02:26as well. And Kate is author and co-author of more than dozen books,
00:02:30a former lion cook turned writer, she lives in San
00:02:33of Francisco with her partner and her Corgy, her most recent book is
00:02:37Italian wine, so please give a warm welcome to all
00:02:44a of three of of them, thank you, thanks uh so much for being here, and I know
00:02:47I mean how many
00:02:48in everyone of here I'm sure loves
00:02:50of avocados, of um, I too would probably it's a good desert island food because they they've got
00:02:54good fat content, that will be really important when you're
00:02:58a surviving, um, but I really just... start this conversation by going
00:03:01into how this the origin story behind this book, because I have some
00:03:05great friends from Elementary school that I'm friends with
00:03:08of today, I've never
00:03:09of
00:03:09of once a woken up and thought,
00:03:10you know what, I really want to write a book with
00:03:12of them, so I i just want to where was the seed
00:03:16of of the idea planted and how did
00:03:18of you two come together this long-term
00:03:20of friendship um to to write this beautiful book
00:03:24of of about why avocados or green
00:03:25of gold? of well, I'm happy to start,
00:03:29of
00:03:31of
00:03:31of and should I explain our avocado toast first? second first yes please do one thing i um so the just some background if you
00:03:34of were able to try the avocado toast on the way in and if not please feel free to get
00:03:38up or or have it um enjoy it on your
00:03:41a way out but um it's you know about varietal blends here and
00:03:45you're so close to wine country so what what that is
00:03:47a is a variatal blend of avocados um of different
00:03:51of of varieties then one of the joys of working on this book was learning about all the different varieties of avocados so
00:03:55that includes bacon avocado gem which you can find in
00:03:59of stores in some of these others are going to be harder, the Carmen, which is a Mexican born
00:04:03variety, and the
00:04:04of Dong Gilagle, which was, which was um, grew from a half ceiling in
00:04:08Lahoya, California, and then there's one has in
00:04:11of there, but thank you to my sister-in-law, Karen and my brother
00:04:14of for for and Sarah's daughter, Mary and for getting that already for us, um,
00:04:18but if you notice some different
00:04:19of notes, we'll be curious what you find, and a little bit about the history,
00:04:23the
00:04:24of of avocado
00:04:24of toast dates back to 1915 when it was served
00:04:28at
00:04:28of the inaugural meeting. the California Avocado Association
00:04:32and the Association also printed out folder of
00:04:36of recipes that included the Avocado toast along with avocado ice
00:04:40of cream and dozens of other delicacies yeah so it was not
00:04:44invented on Instagram is what you're
00:04:47of saying or by the
00:04:48of Australians often get credit um but I will to answer your
00:04:52wonderful question so you
00:04:54of know some one
00:04:54of the stories Sarah and I to tell is that we were friends since
00:04:57of third grade we we came very
00:04:59of of close in sixth grade. and my mother um planted seed, my mother
00:05:03passed away 94, but she had at one point said
00:05:05a to us, you girls should
00:05:06of write a book together, and so that had always been in the back of of our
00:05:10minds um as i um, few years ago, my
00:05:14husband who's a wonderful reader, and um, said to me, why has no
00:05:18one written a great sort of non-fiction narrative book focusing on sort the characters
00:05:22and um about avocado history and avocados, and he's like, you
00:05:26should do that, so I i thought about it, and I thought that is very cool
00:05:29idea, and I called Sarah, and Sarah said no,
00:05:33yeah, Sarah said no, yeah, and why did you say no, I said no, well I
00:05:37was working on some freelance writing, I admit that, but I didn't see a way into
00:05:41the story except through... as a historian doing
00:05:44something that was horticultural history of southern
00:05:48California and um trying to trace down the avocado in the
00:05:51missions, it seemed like a
00:05:53you know basically coming from Mexico that way into the state,
00:05:57um, I did kind of poke around a little without telling you
00:06:01and just didn't see a way, and then we met Wilson
00:06:04Popen, and Wilson Popano was a
00:06:08plant explorer, well he began as nurseryman became
00:06:12came a plant explorer and then an educator in Honduras
00:06:15and when I read just a brief bit about what he had
00:06:19done um which was connected to the Hunt
00:06:23Institute of Botanical um
00:06:26documentations digital
00:06:28archive, I suddenly realized
00:06:31it was all there, the whole story had a way been
00:06:35digitized, but nobody had um used it to
00:06:39write about the avocado or biography of him. and
00:06:43suddenly there it
00:06:45was, was it handwritten? what did it look like? no, it's um digitized,
00:06:49so the hunt institute essentially took pictures
00:06:52of all of his correspondents they had, which
00:06:55was yeah, some these were pdfs
00:06:59with 200 letters in what they
00:07:03thought was the right order, um, and it'd be on and on
00:07:07and on, like 300 pages of that, so I had to go
00:07:11through and try. to read it first of all, lot of it was handwritten,
00:07:15but then when it was typed, that was easy. I would find dates
00:07:18in his work, and then I realized I could find the date a
00:07:22newspaper, I could find the date in the California
00:07:26Avocado Association's year books and these discoveries took
00:07:30place over a longer period of time, but once I knew there was a
00:07:33character driven story, so we'd be writing about people, that would be a
00:07:37fun b. well, and that's something that's it's really hard, because um,
00:07:41when you're... novel, you can choose your characters, you're like, okay, i'm only going
00:07:45to have five characters in the story buse it's going to get too big and complicated, when you're
00:07:49telling narrative non-fiction, you have lot of characters and mean
00:07:53i'm sure there was characters w like this is great but i'm going to
00:07:56have to leave you on the cutting room floor out maybe
00:07:5920 characters and you may it was really really
00:08:03difficult but for a while was connecting
00:08:06growers with the trees they the variety of tree they
00:08:10grew and making a little map of southern California became
00:08:14bigger and bigger and more, daunting, and then you pulled me
00:08:17back. I know, buse yeah, and and I think as a journalist,
00:08:21so my journalism background, I just started picking up the phone while
00:08:25Sarah was finding these wonderful archives, I was calling people, and
00:08:29everyone I called, some these people were our neighbors who had been
00:08:33in avocados for years and and knew some the history,
00:08:36and I um, everyone I would call would give me two more names to
00:08:40call, and and it got to the point. where i did talk to you
00:08:43know a couple hundred people i'm sure and i but it
00:08:46was also you can't include them all or it's just it's
00:08:50so there was um finding those it became clear to
00:08:54us as we went on because there were the popano family
00:08:57actually comes throughout the book and then the broka family who
00:09:01grew most the avocados that you will taste on that toast like those
00:09:05avocados i should say came from broka ranches down in santa
00:09:08paula and um they are the the...
00:09:12Broka and his uncle were important characters in the
00:09:16story,
00:09:17so right, talk a little bit more about the characters, like the Popano family,
00:09:20when you found those archives,
00:09:22it could have just been a random family and they weren't that interesting, but what made them so important for
00:09:26the story? Okay, well um, it was essentially
00:09:30that they introduced the fuerte avocado in
00:09:34um, 1911, and the fuerte avocado, it was born in
00:09:37Atlexsco Mexico in the 1880s
00:09:40and um... when the Popano's decided they wanted
00:09:44to expand their nursery and bring in new varieties, they sent a man
00:09:48to Mexico to look for them. He found about 30 varieties,
00:09:52and one them was this fuerte, the strong,
00:09:56named later by um Fred Popano, he
00:10:00the so the man who found them sends them to the
00:10:03nursery and Wilson begins to grapt them into seedlings, this
00:10:07one seedling survives a brutal freeze, ends up
00:10:11becoming... the most popular avocado in California for the
00:10:15next 50 years until it's surpassed by the has in the early
00:10:1970s, and nobody knows about that, at least I didn't, did
00:10:22you? yeah, I did. no.
00:10:25mean everyone just assumes has the big one that's always been the big one, and there were
00:10:28others did much more, but it's all in the book, some the some the
00:10:32fun things that Sarah found also were you know he was born in Kansas, like who thinks
00:10:36that the story the avocado in in America, you know you have to go to Kansas to
00:10:40start to find the person, and they lived all over central
00:10:43in in America too, Costa Rica, his father had a failing gold
00:10:46mine, and so his story was interesting, and then Wilson
00:10:50was like 19 when he wrote this definitive essay
00:10:54about... the um the avocado in southern California, there you go,
00:10:58yeah, so he was, and he was, I would say,
00:11:01arguably, um, the world expert in
00:11:04avocados, and that was the big surprise, yeah, wow,
00:11:08wow, and so um, just monique, you, you, with your journalism
00:11:12background, 200 plus interviews, that's a lot to to to
00:11:16do and keep track of, but what were um, what were some these
00:11:20standout moments for you when you were doing this, oh, we really, cuz I could
00:11:24see you, starting this book and thinking oh we have story here, but then all of sudden you're like,
00:11:28no, we have a really good story, like
00:11:30so you have the popanos, you get all this historical documentation, but who were like the the
00:11:34people that you talked to you, either on the phone or in person that really brought it
00:11:37to contemporary kind of exist, there was so there were so many, i will say one
00:11:41the one of sarah and did a lot the separated, me in Chicago and
00:11:45Sarah in Massachusetts and we were did a lot over the phone, but we were able to come together
00:11:49from time to time, and one the first times we did is we met and we
00:11:53toured the broka nursery. in um Ventura,
00:11:56California, and and the brokas, I grew up hearing that name Broka
00:12:00because that's where my our dad bought his trees and I don't think it occurred to me like that that
00:12:04was a person, so and so
00:12:08Sarah and I called up and the nurseries run by Rob Broka
00:12:12who is the son the founder and his mother who's in her 90s is
00:12:16still involved, his siblings are involved, but um he gave us tour
00:12:19and at the same time I'd been reading the background and um it sort of
00:12:23came together of like oh my god this is family story too, and the one
00:12:27the most delightful characters we we met um is while Rob
00:12:31was giving his tour tour, there was a woman sitting a desk just
00:12:35quietly grafting avocado um together, so every
00:12:39avocado as you may know, you can't just plant a seed, a has seed and get hass
00:12:43avocado, if you it's like people, you don't know what you're going to get when you when
00:12:47you reproduce, so you um, you'll get some qualities that are passed on,
00:12:51but it's not the same, so it has to be grafted, so there's a woman sitting there and...
00:12:55like oh, you must meet consuelo mendez, she's worked here for 50 years,
00:12:58and consuelo mendez is from, she came from michewaan as a young
00:13:02woman, left her kids for a while with her grandparents or with her
00:13:06parents to um to take care them so she could she and her husband could find
00:13:10opportunity in California and she um
00:13:13learned how to do many things in the nursery, but what was so
00:13:17so um impressive and amazing to us is she is she is an
00:13:21expert grafter and she may she grafts um maybe 900
00:13:25avocados a day and she can't it's faster than anyone there
00:13:28and she has taught um she's taught her boss she's taught his
00:13:32children she's taught they have nurseries now in spain and
00:13:36halisco she's taught people there she sends videos around the world um
00:13:40to other nurseries that licensed their root stocks and um he
00:13:43figured rob and figured she has probably grafted
00:13:47million avocado trees and when you think about the number of fruit
00:13:51from each of those trees um and she said to me she's like my hand
00:13:55have touched many many nations and she was so proud and she was like a
00:13:58lovely person so I loved I loved sort of highlighting all the
00:14:01expertise and interesting characters one more to add Marian
00:14:05Popano we tracked Marian Popano um Wilson
00:14:09Popano's eldest daughter she's 95 and lives in Guatamala yeah and she's an
00:14:13archaeologist kind of this beloved
00:14:15archaeologist so I interviewed
00:14:19her and she was like still eating fuertes from a tree her
00:14:23father had planted there so... that was fun, she was
00:14:26delightful, well and speaking of whates
00:14:28and the different varieties of avocados, i want to also
00:14:32just touch on the has, there's a great story in here about how the has became sort the
00:14:36superpower avocado, but it it didn't seem like it was going to going
00:14:40to be success story when this little you know tree started growing it
00:14:44was almost going to be ripped out, so just talk a little bit about has because
00:14:48i think um we always assume that oh that one's always the one that was the
00:14:52superhero right, i have one comment yeah yeah, just that
00:14:56the um that has himself began growing fuertes and he
00:15:00even won a prize for growing fuertes before his
00:15:04avocado became the famous one, yeah, and so he had um, and
00:15:08he was a postman, he worked at the passadina post office, and
00:15:11so he had hired someone to um graft his trees to
00:15:15fuerte, he didn't do it himself, but this one wouldn't take a graft, so some of you know the story,
00:15:19there's just like a stubborn one that wouldn't take the graft and just grew up from the seed
00:15:23and it ended up being one that his children. loved and he loved and he ended up
00:15:26patenting it and then here's the name Broka again a man named Harold
00:15:30Broka who was
00:15:33um had a avocado nursery in Widier which was the first in southern California to be
00:15:36devoted. to avocados um, he agreed, he made deal
00:15:40with ass to propagate it, he's like, okay, well you're you're working, i will, i will see
00:15:44if i can get these sold in our nursery, but then even then he
00:15:48was kind of you know looking back, it's like here's a guy with incredible
00:15:52foresight, but no, there were so many varieties that they were all trying to get to
00:15:56be like the variety, um, and the big issue with the
00:16:00house was that it turned black, so people were used to the
00:16:03fuerte and even florida, the west indian
00:16:06variety of. avocados grein exactly
00:16:10um so there was this real concern that people would think it was
00:16:13rotten and how can you possibly train the consumer to
00:16:17to have a black avocado but um it's
00:16:21um largely because the hank broka and
00:16:25his nursery that really doubled down on it and also some the
00:16:28technological developments he had around root stocks it um gradually
00:16:32became the one and it's it's it's good for shipping it's
00:16:36pretty good um reliable feartes sort of
00:16:40every other year or don't bear very well, but the has does
00:16:44and so yeah, and then it um people got used to it right,
00:16:47yeah, but then they also that's the thing about um, you you mentioned earlier
00:16:51about grafting and how important it is to graft, that also introduces
00:16:55problems, and so you have tension in this book too, you it's not always just you have
00:16:58enough tension, there's there's conflict, there's like you might not be able to keep
00:17:02growing the avocados because there's disease, so just talk a little bit about the challenges
00:17:06of... out how to grow um commercial avocados
00:17:09successfully? well how commercial is yeah well yeah and
00:17:13starting in um the early days they started guess we saw in
00:17:17the early 30s right they started to notice these
00:17:21especially after a big rains these trees um would
00:17:25not thrive yeah in the in the 40s yeah problems with root
00:17:29rot which um wilson popano
00:17:32and um george zempmyer realized was a
00:17:36problem with the there's the moisture in the ground
00:17:40and different root stocks were necessary to combat
00:17:43the that problem, so if you found a wild avocado, which
00:17:47Wilson Popano was always looking for,
00:17:49it was sort of his holy grail, I must find the wild
00:17:52avocado, origin the species, um,
00:17:56he traveled about, he found small
00:17:59avocados, two inches long with
00:18:03tiny seeds that you could pop in your mouth and have eat the whole thing, he
00:18:07found found avocados that were like a hard ball and you needed a
00:18:10mallet to crack them open, um, each time he found one he
00:18:14thought it was the new wild avocado, and believe that if you
00:18:18use that kind of root stock, assuming it was a
00:18:21variety that held up to moisture, it could solve the
00:18:25problem, so he didn't always know what he was doing, they were just experimenting like
00:18:28crazy, getting these wild avocados and then planting them in
00:18:32California,
00:18:33it was kind of like the innovation that was going on um in but
00:18:37manical research in the early 20th century, you really cover that well in the book and it it kind
00:18:41of
00:18:41I learned so much, but there's um, the the spirit of
00:18:45innovation was really happening and all around these nurseries, I mean pasadina
00:18:49seems like those gardens must have been insane with all these things people were
00:18:53discovering and trying to grow, they were collaborating all the time, the
00:18:56huntington garden became a really important place, the first
00:19:00commercial avicado grove was in 1905, yeah was
00:19:04in um the huntington and passadina right? but
00:19:08it was um Henry huntington commissioned it for his home ground,
00:19:11yeah, yeah, and that was the first commercial orchard way back then, but
00:19:15they were really Sarah mentioned George Zentmer, so he was um plant
00:19:19pathologist that the University of California hired in the early 50s
00:19:22and they um, he also was
00:19:26every summer he would trapes all through Latin America
00:19:29and and sometimes
00:19:31you know have to deal with revolutionaries and poisonous snakes
00:19:35and and he just he had these incredible display of um what he
00:19:39encountered,
00:19:39you climbing up the sides of volcanoes, looking for these indigenous
00:19:43varieties of avocado that they hoped that if they could find a
00:19:47root stock that that had survive that long, they could bring it back to California
00:19:51and find one that would would survive the root stock and be really
00:19:55strong, yeah and if people know here about the wine
00:19:58industry in Europe, Europe is known for
00:20:02being sort of this this where all the famous wine grapes are from, but they're
00:20:05all most them are grown on North
00:20:08America root
00:20:10stock because during this time of exploration there was also a
00:20:13time where
00:20:14like you know insects
00:20:15were being you know imported into countries unintentionally right so you end up with
00:20:19these pests that and maybe southern California couldn't handle
00:20:23also um and so you didn't really know that so what happened in the early
00:20:2620th century
00:20:27you know pests came over on roots wine grapes um or
00:20:31just I think it was a wild grape vine imported from North America that looked cool
00:20:35and some British people wanted it in their garden.
00:20:37became
00:20:38problematic
00:20:46as sort of avocados became more popular and more grown.
00:20:50weaval right um and more commercial maybe yeah
00:20:52and i think that's you know we hear about the quarantine so in 1914
00:20:56right there was came
00:20:57avocado in yeah and there was
00:21:01a
00:21:02it it went actually i think 1912 was when the first
00:21:06um inkling of this problem occurred and then there was another little ban
00:21:09in 1913 but by 14 it was federal b of bringing in
00:21:13seeds that was the main
00:21:16was bringing seed weaval yes yeah it's important to know that the cal polians
00:21:20already had what they needed so they were fine really and they didn't there wasn't a
00:21:24lot of pushback on it, but
00:21:26you you should take over on how that became um controversial, yeah because that
00:21:30this um seed weaval that was kind of rampant in certain orchards
00:21:34in mexico the concern was it was going to come up and devastate the california
00:21:37orchard so they um that was the why the ban was put in place and
00:21:41then it was in place for 80 years it
00:21:45became more of a political issue then later the wars yeah
00:21:49so since '70s like it was around the time of NAFTA that
00:21:53the that the quarantine was lifted um and the trade
00:21:56agreements, but what is often overlooked and i like to say the
00:22:00Mexicans deserve more credit than they often get because they were working since
00:22:04the 70s with the USDDA and the pest inspection services in
00:22:08both countries to just do massive volumes of testing in the
00:22:11orchards and in the packing houses to try to convince you to keep the Californians
00:22:15at ease that like hey we can bring these up here and your orchards are going to be okay
00:22:19but
00:22:27and um but the same time these industries were working together both
00:22:31collaborating um even in the time of Wilson
00:22:35Popano and going all the way through, it seemed like the scientists wanted to
00:22:39collaborate and the governments wanted to sort of like go to battle
00:22:43against each other and at certain times certain times yeah well when
00:22:46did avocados become dangerous because you do have a chapter. about the
00:22:50cartels and i want to know also just how yeah
00:22:53how did you do your um your research for that because that that gets
00:22:56dark talk about just the the the chicago tribune writing
00:23:00about all the cocaine found
00:23:02in in guacamolei that one and we like as we like to
00:23:06say the avocado it's not dangerous people can be dangerous
00:23:10so it's not the avocado's faults if it where it grows up in some
00:23:13dangerous neighborhoods but yeah and then part of that that whole cooking
00:23:17buse since i live in chicago area i was getting
00:23:28but they also found them in statues of virgin maries and like any anything you can
00:23:32stick cocaine in people will find a way but um but they
00:23:36yeah so mish we have a chapter called cartel which looks into
00:23:39the um rise of sort of drug
00:23:43criminal organizations and what's also known as avocado land in
00:23:47mexico so these things have um what i since I
00:23:51wasn't down there,
00:23:52you know, lot of investigative reporters from Mexico and beyond
00:23:56have have written that story, so what I tried to do and Sarah
00:24:00and I worked lot together on this is kind of look at the look at how it
00:24:04was covered, try to find the the trends and try to just talk
00:24:08to people in the industry, but it's something that is real, there's and has
00:24:12abbed and flows in terms of how about it is down there, but it's
00:24:15um, and then the these pest inspections that still
00:24:19take... place and are important part the the trade agreement around
00:24:22avocados, the inspectors from time to time are detained or
00:24:26threatened and then that puts that that puts a halt to the trade for a
00:24:30while, so it's it gets dicey, but um, it's
00:24:34also you know, when I hear people say, oh, the cartels
00:24:38control the avocado industry, I i've read lot about, I don't think
00:24:42that what that's what happens, I think that they have to navigate crime
00:24:46down there, and it's it's funny, this kind of goes to the marketing question.
00:24:50but we were also kind of fascinated buse like the lime industry also has to deal
00:24:54with crime in mexico but in the mango industry mango and probably
00:24:58tequila and like we don't we don't see that on the front page or something about the
00:25:02avocado that attracts attention and it's certainly the avocado
00:25:06industry grew in mexico like crazy and it did
00:25:09attract some bad characters the avocado is really the
00:25:13center the biggest fruit phenomenon ever like can you think of
00:25:17any other fruit or vegetable even will?
00:25:23yeah part
00:25:23that that is attracted so much attention, well let's talk about the marketing, yeah, because that was a big the story too,
00:25:27like how did you get someone, how did you get an American to buy
00:25:30something that we thought was an alligator pair in say
00:25:331915, and all of sudden then in the 70s you have like
00:25:37bikini models with avocados and maybe that works sometimes and maybe it
00:25:40didn't, but then it really takes off, so talk about just some the
00:25:44campaigns that like you dug into, well once again it was the California
00:25:48Avocado Association group of um, mostly growers,
00:25:51but um, entrepreneurs and scientists
00:25:55and university professors who gathered together
00:25:58in um, the Alexandria hotel in Los
00:26:01Angeles, to launch um what they hoped would be an avocado
00:26:05industry and what they knew they needed to do came from
00:26:09Wilson Popano, they needed
00:26:10to the basically organize a
00:26:14list of all the name varieties of avocados, I think they ended up with
00:26:1886 even though um there were more, but name varieties they knew and
00:26:21then choose - just one out of those or a group of
00:26:25those that could be a standard product, because you can't
00:26:29just randomly offer any old avocado, it has to... a
00:26:33good one
00:26:34and so that was what they were looking at when they first organized and over the
00:26:37next few years they produced a list of
00:26:41eight
00:26:41and that those eight were just agreed upon by the
00:26:45group that they were all about the same quality and they could be offered to
00:26:49a supermarket and customer would know oh this is an
00:26:53avocado and i'll buy they didn't need
00:26:55to know the variety at that point
00:26:57and so when they made that step they worked on marketing and
00:27:01eventually lavo company call lavo growers was
00:27:04founded in 1926 and when a
00:27:08name could be attached to this brand that launched the
00:27:12that was a grower that was the growers yeah then that launched the
00:27:16industry then from there um there's a
00:27:20very interesting story that is told that gets up to the next
00:27:23step but um now
00:27:25there was a product and it tasted like butter and they
00:27:29sold it as the butterfruit in the past. most
00:27:33people were getting west indian avocados that are much
00:27:37waterier and those were the salad fruit the tropics, but they
00:27:41were limited. the the calavo organization
00:27:45wanted to sell a versatile fruit, it could be
00:27:48sweetened with sugar, you have it for dessert,
00:27:51it could be a cocktail, it could be basically anything,
00:27:54and so they started writing some incredible recipes,
00:27:58distributing these recipes that were
00:28:01um, integrated avocados to every single stage
00:28:05of meal, and then the last thing is they were working on lowering
00:28:09the price, it had to be for a middle class, they were
00:28:13expensive, they were, they were $15 a piece
00:28:17sometimes that a high-level avocado,
00:28:20$60 for a salad in 1915 in New
00:28:24York, in like a fancy hotel, so these are the upper
00:28:28level, but much too expensive for the middle class, and so that was the biggest
00:28:31challenge. lowering the price, lowering the price and figuring out, and that has to do with
00:28:35all the logistics that you cover in the book, I think this would be a good time just to read a little
00:28:39bit from of your from the book, I want to hear also some of that one the recipes
00:28:43that you're going to tell us about
00:28:45and we um and that the our readings are have to do with marketing and we can
00:28:49um we can talk a little bit also about the sort the
00:28:52genius the Mexican marketing organizations too, everyone knows avocatos
00:28:56from Mexico and the super
00:28:58bowl.
00:29:02with the recipes right here, because we're on recipes, yeah,
00:29:06okay, this is requested recipe by Marian
00:29:10maners who is the director the home services bureau
00:29:14in the for the Los Angeles Times in 1932,
00:29:18it's Colabo sailboat salad. It
00:29:22is one the easiest salads in the world to prepare.
00:29:26Cut one the large calavos into quarters. You now have
00:29:29calavo boat. To make it
00:29:32a sale. just insert a square cracker, point downward
00:29:35into the prow the boat, fill the boat with a
00:29:39cargo of your favorite fruit, the little oranges are particularly
00:29:43good looking sliced, using a cheese,
00:29:46cheeseecracker sale, or just serve with simple
00:29:50dressing,
00:29:52perfect,
00:29:54you want to, oh, i need to go, i need
00:29:56to go
00:29:56next, yeah, for this part too, okay, so little
00:30:00background, it's 193 one and Calavaos working hard to market
00:30:04a surpluss of fruit during the
00:30:06depression.
00:30:09The industry's potential and its current flight were not lost on the
00:30:13powerful influencer Harry Chandler, now publisher the
00:30:17Los Angeles Times. hired Vance to
00:30:22the He Ethel Morce serve as the director Times New Home Services Bureau, kind of think
00:30:26tank designed to attract influx of female readership and
00:30:30to spread the word about California grown. products under
00:30:33the pseudon
00:30:35marian manners, morse taught classes in the new times
00:30:39building, traveled to other venues throughout the city for cooking
00:30:42demonstrations and published her own tested recipes in the
00:30:46times. marin maners frequently included avocados
00:30:50in her recipes, always branded as colavos,
00:30:53emphasizing that only this California brand garnered her stamp of
00:30:57approval. her cookbook, mexican dishes,
00:31:01dishes the dawn. which would be published in 1933 by
00:31:05richfield oil company, included recipe for
00:31:08tacos requiring one avocado and movie star
00:31:12Ramone Navaro's own guacamole. recipe, consisting of
00:31:16two avocados, half a can of green chilies and a pound of
00:31:20grapes. pomegranate seeds were a highly
00:31:23recommended, if obscure grape
00:31:25substitute. Novaro, known widely to movie
00:31:29goers as the Latin lover, was born in Mexico, but had been
00:31:33recast as a Hollywood heart throb of Spanish descent. The
00:31:37year Mexican dishes was published, he starred in the Barbarian,
00:31:41also known as a night in Cairo, risking death for love.
00:31:45alongside Merna Loy. Seasing these
00:31:48successful marketing ventures and with knod to
00:31:51Marion Manners, Colavo Growers expanded its byproducts
00:31:55department. In addition to Calavo crushed fruit
00:31:58flavoring, the secret behind Colavo Ice Cream,
00:32:02Colavo bread shortening had proved successful ingredient for baked
00:32:05goods. Avocado oil, although not yet
00:32:09profitable for cooking, found its place in high-end
00:32:12cosmetics. These marketing. achievements represented a
00:32:16significant step forward for Colavo growers, which
00:32:19benefited from free advertising while squeezing income out of
00:32:23piles of damaged abocados.
00:32:27Calavo and association members may not have been aware of an
00:32:31elite fashion fad inspired by their favorite fruit.
00:32:34Avocado green appeared as a color choice for high-end women's
00:32:38dresses in 1928 and by the mid-1930s as an
00:32:42option for fashionable coats, handbags and shoes in the best
00:32:46department stores. Livingston brothers of San
00:32:49Francisco advertised crape frogs
00:32:53in Avocado Green, sponsored by Chanel for
00:32:57prices as high as $98, nearly $2,00
00:33:00today. For the first time, the Avocados's
00:33:04aura was abstracted to represent the exotic, precious
00:33:08and fashionable, a status that likely evolved from its long
00:33:12association with elite hotels.
00:33:18and then um I can pick up the in
00:33:21the a little bit later so the way and I think the way Sarah and I
00:33:25structured the book ultimately and that was sort of part the story of how we
00:33:28collaborated was to um it's roughly
00:33:31chronological but we also built it around the story these two trees that the
00:33:35has and the and the fuerte but I'm going to pick up um where
00:33:39Sarah left off there about a little bit about the marketing so
00:33:42now um we're we're coming into 1950s, so
00:33:46fashion trend that began in the late 1920s was picking up
00:33:49steam, avocado green shoes, dresses, suits, and household decor, were
00:33:53proving increasingly popular from New York City to Nashville,
00:33:57and perhaps inspired by similar shade called Green Almond on the streets of
00:34:01Paris. The renowned California-born fashion designer Bonnie Kashan
00:34:05designed avocado colored clothing for high-end department stores in the
00:34:0850s. Fashionable Wallpaper Company, CW. Stockwell of
00:34:12Los Angeles, famed for its bold banana leaf pattern design
00:34:16installed in the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1949, partnered
00:34:20with Colavo to create an Avocado themed wallpaper as part the company's
00:34:24Trend the Times Collection. Colavo printed the pattern
00:34:28inside matchbooks as a clever cross promotion. Paint
00:34:31colors, textiles and furniture followed
00:34:34and by 1966 when General Electric included Avocado Green in its
00:34:38new line of home appliances, a companion to toast colored
00:34:41harvest gold, the color had officially entered the main stream,
00:34:45soon consumers could buy cars and avocado green too,
00:34:491968 dodge chargers, 1969 opals,
00:34:531970 catadalac eldorados, 1973 Ford Grant
00:34:57Torinos and 1974 Volkswagen Things. Studies
00:35:01showed that Americans considered avocados fattening and many consumers didn't
00:35:05know what to do with them, so the avocado growers in
00:35:08California pushed the avocados sex appeal by promoting California
00:35:12avocados as the sentuous food. and commissioning radio
00:35:16ads with soap opera and saltry voiced women who
00:35:19coaked listeners to make it with an
00:35:21avocado. a 1977
00:35:25full-page ad in Cosmopolitan magazine showed thin blonde
00:35:29woman an avocado print bikini lounging a beach, her ribs
00:35:33protruding, her eyes closed, her face tilted back soaking up the
00:35:36sun, readers who mailed quote, sliver of avocado skin
00:35:40wiped, dry and flattened between two pieces of paper, along with a
00:35:44checker money. order for $10.95 would receive their own slice of paradise from the
00:35:48California Avocado advisory board, an avocado print
00:35:51California Avocado bikini in one of two styles.
00:35:55I'm thinking that as a writer when you're finding these nuggets,
00:35:59you're so excited because you're like, oh, this is going to be a good story, this is going in the
00:36:03book. more than 10 times a
00:36:06day, like about finding something, gosh, I mean, avocado
00:36:10bikini, and that you had to mail a sliver of this, the
00:36:14specificity of... that is really crazy to me, you had to dry it
00:36:17and dry it and then you h to really want that
00:36:20bikini so um,
00:36:23well in i want to uh leave time for questions, but first let's just... talk a little
00:36:27bit about buying avocado, seasonal availability of avocados, I
00:36:31know seasonality was a big part of this this book
00:36:35on on these growers trying to get you know their product in stores,
00:36:38but like today, what does it mean for us now,
00:36:41like when I'm going to the store to buy avocados, what should I be thinking, um, how is
00:36:45how has your mind been changed by writing this book, when you
00:36:49go buy avocados in Massachusetts or Chicago or elsewhere, well
00:36:52you should start, monique went to the farmer's market, the local market and
00:36:56discover. the San Francisco fairy building, yeah, which you were there too,
00:37:00yesterday, yeah, and I found um, gem avocados are
00:37:03a are kind that you can now also find in grocery stores um, that
00:37:07are - a relative the has, but they were, it's a
00:37:11variety patented by the University of California Riverside, um, that
00:37:15are delicious, it's really one of my favorite, but yeah, I mean it really,
00:37:19it was interesting as the cuz the fuerte, the first star the
00:37:23show, is a winter bearing avocado, and the the Hass is
00:37:26summer. so one of varieties that is really delicious is called
00:37:30the gen that you may also see at the farmer's market and that is
00:37:34um that was developed after
00:37:37extensive research by uc riverside because the california
00:37:41industry wanted um hass like avocado but that
00:37:45stayed green and so that's what how the gwen came about but by
00:37:49the time it did everyone had already gotten used to the house so it just never made it, it never made
00:37:53it big kind of confused so now you can get it at the bro stand at the
00:37:56farm. on Saturdays when they have avocados, otherwise you're not going to find a
00:38:00gen in the grocery store ell exactly and and I do one of my
00:38:04favorites also is the reed which is around avocado in the um you can get in
00:38:08the fall, but I i was really also stunned you
00:38:12when the Mexican industry the the the avocado
00:38:15region and Michuwakan and now also Hilisko where the Mexican avocados are
00:38:19grown, they can grow them yearound,
00:38:21the it's sort of it's the home the avocado and they have um a year
00:38:25round fruit,
00:38:27it does... 'you we notice differences of of quality and
00:38:30taste as it goes on, which we find kind of interesting, but I think if consumers
00:38:34are looking for the same kind of fruit, it's going to, it'll they do
00:38:38change, um, the so the super bowl is not necessarily the best
00:38:42time eat avocados, I mean not necessarily, yeah, and it also
00:38:46what really matters, and this is where I was asking the the
00:38:49riverside avocado experts, there's Dr. Mary Lou Arpea, who is such an
00:38:53important figure both in the industry and in the book, who's there who's the go-to person
00:38:57at Riverside, it was like, how do you, where do you go for the best avocados? And
00:39:01she's like, it's all about the produce manager, so you could be a, you, you,
00:39:05I have found wonderful, um, amazing
00:39:08avocados, in Chicago at Bodega's, like little Mexican
00:39:12markets in the westside of Chicago, where they keep them behind the counter
00:39:16and and one by one will like carry them out to you and let you pick which one, like they
00:39:20care so much about their avocados and the the Alejandrina brand
00:39:24is the favorite um brand from Mexico that the chef
00:39:28Rick Bayles uses and he he um is huge fan of
00:39:31Mexican Avocados, but he he knows the path that goes from
00:39:35the Alejandrina packing house in in michuacon all the way up to
00:39:39his through the Gonzalez Brothers who are in the book, Produce, which is the
00:39:43wholesaler into his kitchen and he and how those
00:39:46avocados are treated along the way really matters, so what temperature they're
00:39:50at, if they've been handled roughly, he he says he tells the chefs
00:39:54in his kitchen do not even look at the avocados when... until you're ready
00:39:58to use them, he's like, just treat them so gently, and even
00:40:01like we grew up on an avocado farm, we would sort of toss them in around like
00:40:05everyone else, but um, treat them gently.
00:40:09um, i have just one last question and then i'll open it up for questions from everyone else, but
00:40:13um,
00:40:14you know, when you were both working on this book, what were you striving for?
00:40:18was there one goal, one purpose that you were striving for while you were putting it
00:40:21together? we wanted a real story, we didn't want
00:40:25to be omniscent reporters. I didn't ever want to do it
00:40:29thematically, well you didn't
00:40:31want to do it originally, but never
00:40:35did it, one potential publisher said, oh, could you do it this
00:40:38way, and I thought, oh, okay, and then had like a mini
00:40:42crisis overnight, that's not our story, buse we're telling story, it
00:40:45has to be, it has to carry you along like you're there, and
00:40:49that's what we tried
00:40:50to do, I think, and I think that the another way I
00:40:54would also answer is that that is going back to that expertise. because I think
00:40:58I also hope people after they read the book, well, we all should care about where
00:41:02our food comes from, and and just thinking about the many hands that have touched that
00:41:06along the way
00:41:07and not to take it for granted and to um to think about
00:41:11the the tremendous work on on you, all
00:41:15aspects and all sides the border to make these um get these to
00:41:19our kitchen, yeah the collaboration,
00:41:21the collaborations, the Mexicans and the Californians was
00:41:25major theme and that was... wanted our collaboration
00:41:28to kind of show that, and I think we we returned to it
00:41:32because it's so much part the history, so we drew that
00:41:36out and made it central, agree, and
00:41:39and when you read
00:41:39the book. look for what happens to the original has tree and the wood and how it
00:41:43ends up and all these different places after after the tree passes, it's a really
00:41:47great great story, i will leave that for when you find it in the pages, um,
00:41:51but yeah, i'll open it up for audience
00:41:53questions, okay, maybe
00:41:56you guys,
00:41:59thank you, okay, i'm going to pass the mic around, your first
00:42:01question, uh, thank you for the
00:42:04information, i'm curious about the varieties, you said
00:42:08there are about 89 variet. and what makes a
00:42:12a good avocado versus you don't like the taste of an
00:42:15avocado? i can it to apples,
00:42:17you know the sweet, the the more tart, the
00:42:21mushy or firm, can i have no idea what
00:42:25the variety range is in avocado? could you describe that for us? sure, and
00:42:29it's even so the 89 that's mentioned sort of in the early days right
00:42:33the k before
00:42:33they knew, but now they're um more than
00:42:371,ous named varieties. the qualifier, the name
00:42:41varieties, and surely more than that overall, but those were
00:42:45the varieties that were identified in 1915, that grouping, and they
00:42:48still had to bring it down to just eight, but I think that that
00:42:52question of you, if you could taste all those a thousand ones, I
00:42:56think the it's personal just like with wine, it's like what you like,
00:43:00so, but there are some that are sweeter and some that are water, more watery, some
00:43:04that are creamy, and I, I think the ones that have done well for the
00:43:07industry, it's really important that they ship well. but um like we cut open
00:43:11one one that's in the um the is it the dan gogle which is
00:43:15this like weird sort of all belong avocado is in the avocado toast that we're
00:43:19serving it um when you open it it's very beautiful but
00:43:23the the endocarp which is the sort of papery thing around the seed kind of get stuck to the
00:43:27flesh and so it was just sort of a little pain in the neck to like scrape it out which like
00:43:31is fine but if you want to sell something at scale it has to just like pop out
00:43:34and not have that trouble so so yeah
00:43:38they're all just different so I actually I have an avocado
00:43:42peeler, my husband and I just we treasure this
00:43:46avocado pillar, we've never seen one since, it's very
00:43:49simple, and uh, whenever I'm out and there's a garage sale,
00:43:53I go looking for it bause we're so afraid that something's going to happen, but what I've noticed is
00:43:57there's so many avocado peelers now out there, do you guys have
00:44:00favorite way of cutting and scooping avocados? first of all, please send us
00:44:04picture of what you have, I'd love to see it, okay, I mean,
00:44:08I've always been a school. super just from, i can't change
00:44:12because that's how learned, but do you,
00:44:15sorry, you um, cut it
00:44:17ant cut around it, and then you get the open it, you get the knife, you hit the
00:44:21pit, you turn it
00:44:22and then scoop, yeah, a little both
00:44:26ways, and there's a tool that my sister-in-law gave me that, i don't know the name of
00:44:30it, do you know karen, but we can um, we can show show you a link
00:44:34or something, but it's got like a little scoop on one end and a little
00:44:38spike for hitting the the... and and then some serrated
00:44:42edge for sing it open so it um I'm left-handed so it's like not
00:44:45made for the lefties but I still like it's um but yeah
00:44:49there's so I in the course of this Sarah and I had had fun buying
00:44:53like avocado swag of all sorts of style the earrings
00:44:57and like just weird things spatulas
00:45:01avocado shower cap in the dollar 25
00:45:04store yeah it's on everything but these tools I have lot of
00:45:08tools and they a lot them just works, if you found something you like, that's great.
00:45:12yeah, yeah, well, I'll send it to you, and if you ever see one, let me know,
00:45:16buse, yes, I
00:45:19have a an historical question, regarding carpenteria,
00:45:23yeah, uh, my
00:45:26recollection, in the 60 to 64
00:45:29period, almost all the groves were lemon groves,
00:45:33so when did Carpenteria move and
00:45:37replace the lemons with avocados?
00:45:39That's a that's a great question and one we just recently did a
00:45:43presentation to the friends the library down in Carpentery and we're kind of digging into the
00:45:47Carpenteria story
00:45:48and I think it was 1978 that avocados surpassed lemons in
00:45:52Santa Barbara County as the as the most um economically important
00:45:56crop and um as we were it's
00:46:00really when you track the rise of Brokon nursery you track the rise
00:46:04the the avocados in in southern California and I think there
00:46:08were also some tax laws that were... that allowed people
00:46:11to um to put egg on their land
00:46:15and and it was encouraging egg, but the the sort of avocado boom in
00:46:19the 60s and 70s was happening throughout southern california,
00:46:22including including carp, and a the older
00:46:25trees on our farm which our grandmother had planted
00:46:29earlier more in the 50s, there was still a lot of
00:46:32plantings um of different varieties because they
00:46:36weren't sure which one was going to make it, so lot the...
00:46:40were still avocados in the valley at that time, but um,
00:46:43not not as many as you saw
00:46:46later.
00:46:54Hi, thank you so much, your talk is just fascinating and fun
00:46:58and and everything. Um, so I'm wondering, I know I
00:47:01had an avocado in Florida that was completely
00:47:05different, and I don't know if it's that were spoiled here that or that we think
00:47:09ours are the best, but um, does California
00:47:13influence the rest the United States as far as avocados,
00:47:16or do they like, are there two different stories completely
00:47:20like east coast, west coast? are two different stories, yeah, so
00:47:24you are most likely eating a west indian
00:47:27avocado, that's the variety, variety name, they called
00:47:31that, um, they're watery, that's why they were called the
00:47:35salad fruit the tropics and the water is simply like a less
00:47:39of an oil content, so it makes for different
00:47:42flavor as well, because i think taste is informed by
00:47:46texture, and and
00:47:50so that's part of it, the florida and history
00:47:53began, so Florida did have avocados in the
00:47:571890s and they were selling them to hotels in New
00:48:01York City mostly um for expensive prices and they
00:48:05were alligator pairs. um, actually even in the
00:48:081880s some of those avocados
00:48:11were um were grown in
00:48:15New York a few few times, so just to show people what they
00:48:19were that early, there's a bit about that in the book.
00:48:24um, but the Florida growers never organized the way they did
00:48:27in California and eventually most
00:48:31the uh orchards were raised because of
00:48:34development to be honest, and then
00:48:37do you want to go
00:48:38and more more recently, we don't get as much into this in the book, but there's been a
00:48:42terrible um insect infestation that's really wiped out some their
00:48:46orchers, but they still have, they still grow a number of varieties in
00:48:49Florida, um, of those
00:48:51of that west Indian t but one thing that fascinated me is at kind of
00:48:55um just before the Californians started fighting the
00:48:59Mexican industry they started fighting with the Floridians because Florida
00:49:03wanted to sell their avocados in California and um there was actually
00:49:06case much to my surprise that went all the way to the Supreme Court
00:49:10between the Florida and California growers um because
00:49:14the California was saying you can't sell in California unless you're a certain oil
00:49:18content and they were saying that you're being protectionist and This
00:49:22is why I went up to the supreme court, but I think I think the California,
00:49:26Californians lost, but
00:49:28it was um, you know, I don't, I
00:49:30don't think Florida
00:49:31Avocados really ever took off in
00:49:34no, California,
00:49:39hi,
00:49:39yes, I like to grow a tree, what are the
00:49:43requirements, where do I buy one from, and what is the best type to
00:49:46buy, and also one more question, can you graft like an
00:49:49avocado onto like an apple route? does it have to be an avocado
00:49:53tree? that's a really interesting question.
00:49:57i my guess would that you could not do that, but i would say
00:50:01um, i would call, i would call the folks that broke on nursery who are
00:50:05are the experts, so you can look them up, they're inventura county, and
00:50:09um, they they will give you some advice. another, another
00:50:12source i like is um, his name is greig
00:50:16alder, l d e r, like the tree, and he has, he's a farm
00:50:20advisor down in San Diego County and he has email
00:50:23newsletter with a wealth of information about growing
00:50:27all sorts of trees, but especially avocados, so um,
00:50:31lot of it will be, the root stock is really important, so it depends on where you're
00:50:35planting your tree, but they will um between that
00:50:38newsletter and then maybe calling some folks at that exp that
00:50:42avocado nursery, they can give you some good advice. talk a little bit
00:50:45about avocado ripening, buse that's something that's very specific if you want to bear
00:50:49fruit cuuse that's something that you talk about in the book. yeah, just
00:50:53that well the the ripening process of just guess making a fruit like how does
00:50:56a flower get pollinated? yeah, yes, yeah, it's really um, and that
00:51:00it's it's sort of against all odds, because avocado
00:51:03trees have like every spring will have millions of flowers,
00:51:07but only few thousand will or and then hundred
00:51:11actually will turn into the fruit, it's a very inefficient um,
00:51:15it reproduces very inefficiently, so um,
00:51:18it is, it is hard to get an orchard or a...
00:51:22tree going, so it does help to get some good advice,
00:51:25yeah earlier, you said
00:51:29that it's difficult though to grow avocado trees up in northern
00:51:32California, is that do you think
00:51:36someone could? I mean, I've seen, well, and one of one
00:51:40the interesting things is as the industry in
00:51:44California, so in San Diego County, which was the leading
00:51:47county for fruit for many years, there's been a
00:51:51lot of. issues with water and cost of water
00:51:55and um lot
00:51:56of fights down there and their their industry is
00:51:59shrinking, but these root stock developments are
00:52:02helping the grow find out. find road stocks that that will
00:52:06grow in hotter weather, colder weather, higher salinity soil,
00:52:10so they're growing them in the Sanjoquin Valley now, um,
00:52:14so the the whole industry is moving northward, and we
00:52:18also found like somewhere in the book is one the most popular root
00:52:21stocks is called the Duke 7, and um, it
00:52:25supposedly came from an orchard in northern California, like over in the
00:52:28um, like the Uba city area so, so
00:52:32there's there have been some, so yeah, it's
00:52:34so interesting. that
00:52:35you see them too, next you'll have to write about Uba city and being the the the
00:52:39heart the the prune business, so that's a different, that's
00:52:43a different book, back
00:52:47here, thank you
00:52:51so much, this is an amazing talk, you're such such a great
00:52:53team, um so my question actually has to do with what
00:52:57you just mentioned um about the water use and some
00:53:00of some the really nutrition nutrition dense foods like almonds and
00:53:05avocados are also you have lot of water,
00:53:09lot of water use, and you started to allude to some the
00:53:12innovations,
00:53:13and I'm just wondering if you learn much about those innovations, and also just any
00:53:17other things that you came across in terms the environmental impact
00:53:21versus the the very positive nutritional impact, right? that's a great question,
00:53:25thank you, and yeah, there's a there's a lot um in the book, especially towards the end
00:53:29about the um climate impact of avocados and some the work going on and
00:53:33the controversies, one the things i learned is that like you will see
00:53:37articles that like it takes this much water to grow this fruit
00:53:40and um what i've learned is you have to really kind of dig a little
00:53:44bit more about well where is that being grown and and and
00:53:48what um what environment so the
00:53:52farmers now like the most high-tech avocado farmers are
00:53:55putting sensors on the avocado itself or on the
00:53:59trunk that they can then monitor on their phone that lets them know when
00:54:03the tree starts to become um come you know
00:54:06thirsty and so they can put very um
00:54:09concentrated small amounts of water to get it where it needs to be because that
00:54:13it's so you can you can um i don't want to
00:54:17misquote buse it's in the book but the the some of those orchards
00:54:21are able to cut their water use in half or less so and it was also
00:54:25interesting to me that the first time drip irrigation was ever used
00:54:28in California was an avocado grove is an
00:54:32experimental process and it was a technologi that the Israelis had
00:54:36developed and um, but I thought, well that's sort the avocados gift
00:54:40to the to California was bringing in the
00:54:43the strip irrigation, so I would say there's a
00:54:47lot of talk, the avocado industry, there's something called the Hass avocado
00:54:50board, which is a marketing entity, which all
00:54:54the importers and the Californians pay into two and a
00:54:58half cents a pound for every pound of avocado sold, but they have just
00:55:02developed um sustainability center, the
00:55:05website, but but the website has real academic
00:55:08studies around water, around um other,
00:55:12I'm trying to forget they have few few different themes,
00:55:16but they're you know, it's not, they
00:55:20can be, it's not just green washing, like they're putting real um studies up there to
00:55:24help the industry learn how to better manage their orchards,
00:55:27so it's the're very, the industry is very aware the need
00:55:31to um improve their footprint, their carbon footprint and all these things.
00:55:35so and monique also went to the world avocado Congress in New
00:55:38Zealand where she learned a lot
00:55:41of about irrigation and how different countries were working on the problem
00:55:44of
00:55:45you know trying to use less water? exactly and little little New Zealand um
00:55:49is the every four years there's this world avocado congress that moves around the world to
00:55:53different um regions and New Zealand as a small industry that dates back I
00:55:57think to the 50s or 60s but they the whole theme of this
00:56:01conference was sustainability and they had done intensive study in their
00:56:05orchards and um it's you know this is very
00:56:09diffuse industry and even in Mexico I think there are something like
00:56:1340 thousand different avocado farmers like these are lot of small farms so getting
00:56:17everyone on the same page is issue but it um it
00:56:20was interesting to see that so central to the to the
00:56:24meeting so in in closing I would love to ask
00:56:28each one of you what your favorite way eat an avocado
00:56:31is oh mine's easy. absolutely
00:56:35plain, no, it used to be, I would have the salt
00:56:38or um, hot sauce or any kind of seasoning, and then
00:56:42after I started working on the book, I was eating them every day, and it
00:56:46just became, I needed to taste the avocado flavor, which
00:56:50is unidentifiable, like we've not been able to pin it
00:56:53down, there's the nutty in the meeting and all of that, we've asked people at the
00:56:57culinary um demonstration we were at, and nobody can
00:57:01really nail it, and that's sort the beauty of it, so I just enjoy it. maybe
00:57:05with a corn tortilla and then for me, having grown up on avocado
00:57:09farm, i used to like it playing, and this whole process and of research is
00:57:12open my mind to all sorts of different ways, so but
00:57:16i um, and not just cuuse she's here. but my wonderful sister-in-law here and i will have to say
00:57:20her guacamole is my favorite thing and she
00:57:23and she's um experimental so it's like it's not always the same but
00:57:27it's that's what's kind of fun
00:57:29you can have so many different ways of of eating them but um
00:57:32yeah have you tried it with the grapes and the
00:57:35pom what was the what was the recipe that was that kind of kind
00:57:39of bananas but uh
00:57:43um oh that's a good question um well i did go to the...
00:57:47cough um uh farm the the stand at the fairy building
00:57:51yesterday morning and i got some their gem avocados and i just
00:57:55got like um acme has these really large lavants that they sell at the um
00:57:59at their bakery at the fairy building and um i got the large levant not the
00:58:03regular size lavant cuuse it's like just like a little bit more moist
00:58:06the the sourdough and toast that and mean then i was like it's cliche it's avocado
00:58:10toast but you know what with some olive oil top it's
00:58:14hard to beat yeah and i know that the avocado people and the olive
00:58:18people did have a beef too early on, but i think cuz i think you mentioned something about they
00:58:22were trying to make oh olives, they wanted avocado fat to be the healthier
00:58:26fat than the olive fat, yeah that was that was kind of
00:58:28funny, exactly, yeah, so maybe i'll try it with
00:58:32avocado oil next, well thank you
00:58:36so much, thank you for sharing that, thank you for sharing this book for all of us who
00:58:39love avocados, we so appreciate it, thank you all for being
00:58:43here and um i encourage you to purchase a book up at the counter support
00:58:47our author, supporting independent bookstore,
00:58:51and um, we really appreciate it, have a lovely rest of your day, and
00:58:55we're going to do a quick set here to change so that there'll be a signing
00:58:59table, and then you can line up down the center to have your book sign. thanks
00:59:02again,
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01:01:53All right, thank you everyone. Thank you for coming. Welcome to the
01:01:57New Hampshire historical Society. I see lots of members.