Most mornings Dick Okie is in his pickup truck. He bumps along, driving along rows of fruit trees, looking for a peach that can compete.
It doesn’t have to taste good or be bursting with juice, but it had better be red.
Okie works at the Southeastern Fruit and Tree Nut Research Station here. He’s part of the largest breeding program for stone fruit (such as peaches or plums) in the eastern United States.
It is meticulous, painfully slow work that involves cross-breeding varieties in search of improved fruit. But it’s important work, especially for the Georgia peach industry, which is struggling to keep up with giant California’s giant peach. Okie has a Ph.D. in plant breeding from North Carolina State. His research involves thousands of trees in various stages of growth. He says it combines science with art and equates it with driving a battleship–a ponderous undertaking.
“The decisions I made 10 years ago, I’m working with now,” he said. He’s constantly looking for varieties of trees that will produce better fruit.
“They need color, size and firmness,” Okie said as he guided his truck around the 1,200 acres of the station. “Generally, flavor is not one of the important criteria.”
Welcome to the late 20th Century, when what’s inside doesn’t count.
Appearance is everything
Consumers want a buffed-up peach, big and brightly colored. Al Pearson, manager of Big 6 Farms and president of the Georgia Commodity Commission for Peaches, equates it to “selling the sizzle and not the bacon.”
“We encourage Dick Okie that his top selection criteria are color and size,” Pearson said. “In his breeding criteria, taste is way down the line, but that’s the competition we’re fighting.”
Although Georgia is the peach state, California is the 800-pound gorilla of the fruit-and-nut industry. For example, in 1996 California produced 83 percent of the nation’s peach crop. But it still was not among the state’s top 20 commodities.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Duke Lane, whose family owns the largest peach-growing operation in the state. “I went out there last year, and you can ride down the road, and there are peaches on one side, then garlic, then walnuts, limes. California produces a peach that, for a number of reasons, we can’t match.
“We fight so many elements–wind, rain, temperature.”
And California sets the standard for what is a good-selling peach in America. That standard has evolved over the past 10 or 15 years. Today, red is the color of money. That’s because red means ripe, even if it isn’t, and big means better, even if it’s not.
“What happened in years past is, the longer you can leave a peach on a tree the redder it gets,” Okie said. “Over the years, starting in California, they developed peaches that were solid red way before they were ripe. People still associate color with ripe fruit, like red apples. A lot of it has to do with buyers with chain stores thinking that’s what a consumer wants.”
Pearson compares it to the apple industry. Georgia growers used to have success producing an apple that tasted very good.
“When we tried to grow apples and compete with the red delicious, the Georgia apple didn’t have the classic color and shape,” Pearson said. “Now there are no commercial apple packing houses in the state.”
If red is the standard, Georgia growers find themselves fighting to convince buyers, especially those working for large grocery chains, to take the Georgia peach over California’s.
“We may have a good-eating peach, but it may not have the blush the chain store is looking for,” Lane said. He used this season as an example of how frustrating selling peaches on a large scale can be.
Earlier this year, California was late producing its crop, and Georgia farmers did well until early July.
“But when California’s Elegant Lady variety came out and we got into our varieties of yellow peaches, the chain stores went to California and their more colorful peach,” Lane said. “We need to have a peach that’s in demand for the duration of the season, from the middle of May until the middle of August.”
And there’s another factor Georgia growers confront every year. California, in general, has ideal growing conditions. In Georgia, every year is a gamble.
“Their first concern is, `How do I market my crop?’ ” Pearson said. “My first concern is, am I going to have a crop?”
And California operates on a much larger scale. As Peach County extension agent Mark Collier put it, when it comes to Georgia, “you could put every major peach grower in the state in your office.”
Seeing red
Georgia growers readily acknowledge the buying public wants red peaches. Also, red peaches hide bruises and blemishes, so they’ll always look more appealing. And even if the shoppers wandering the supermarket aisles might prefer a good-tasting piece of fruit, the option is often taken out of their hands.
“It may be more (grocery chains) driving the consumer than the other way around,” Collier said.
Georgia growers know they’re not going to be able to come up with 20 varieties of all-red peaches good enough to market throughout the growing season any time soon.
“There’s a lot of soul-searching going on,” Pearson said. “You have to wonder if there is light at the end of this tunnel. Is there a place for Southern peaches in the wholesale market?”
Collier, who works with major peach producers in the state, hopes a picky buying public can help sustain the South’s peach market. He used the success of the Gala apple as an example.
“A few years ago people didn’t want it. It looked different, yellow and kind of striped. Now people ask for it,” he said.
Georgia growers do have an advantage in Eastern markets in being able to ship a fresh peach more quickly. And despite California’s dominance, chances are Georgia peaches always are going to be around.
“There will always be Georgia peaches, but there might not be packing houses. It might need to be on a more personal level,” Pearson said.
But Okie continues his work, checking trees and fruit, working in the lab and keeping detailed records.
New varieties of peaches are released almost every year, with exotic names such as Flameprince, Sunprince and Juneprince. Experiments extend to the pruning and shaping of the trees. It’s all done knowing the true test may not come for a decade.
Maybe by then consumers will understand there’s more to a good peach than its color. In fact, as one Big 6 employee put it, “Peach is a color, and it isn’t red.”
