Import, Export, Extract: American Capitalism and the Grapefruit

• In Event: Edible Imperialisms: Food, Capitalism, and Late-Stage American Empire?

Abstract

Grapefruits are not from the United States. A not unfamiliar produce story: grapefruit is a Caribbean hybrid with roots in Southeast Asia, likely introduced through Barbados at the end of the 17th century, through British imperialist trade. In this paper, I am interested not in its origins, but in two junctures where the path of grapefruit is tangled up in American capitalism: 1. the development of the grapefruit market (and of the grapefruit for market) and the 2. the development of nootkatone, a commercial flavor of grapefruit, from cedar trees.

In the first example, I will look at the process and people that developed grapefruit agriculture in Florida and Texas and markets across the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century. By examining the creation and marketing of American varieties, we see how American palates shape the plants, how American approaches to agricultural subsidy and research shape avenues of cultivation, and how American business practices, especially marketing, shape the grapefruit industry, in the United States and across the world. The fruit plants that American agriculturalists fashion, now redder and significantly sweeter, are then exported to a number of countries, where the fruit is later imported back into the U.S. The section will consider how American imperial systems of cultural, scientific, and commercial pressure function in a global fruit trade.

In the second example, I will look at the process and people who developed nootkatone as a commercial flavoring. Supported by a range of government and business organizations, the discovery of nootkatone and subsequent extraction practices shift the markets for grapefruit products. I will look at this flavor, made from wood, and the role of American agencies in its inception and its subsequent global flavor science path, ending by examining who is making the most of the extract now under what extractive conditions (primarily in Asia) for the heavily North American market.

With these two grapefruit cases, this paper aims to expand how we understand the role of American agricultural research and American marketing in international food trade.

Author

• Katie Rawson, University of Pennsylvania