Yves Péhaut
First came spices. Then the eighteenth century witnessed its first glimpse of the fabulous fate in store for such foreign foodstuffs as sugar, coffee, chocolate, and tea, which eventually became basic staples of the western European and North American diet. In the nineteenth century additional foreign foods appeared on the scene and quickly caught on. Some, such as tropical fruits, proved successful because of certain unique, previously unsuspected qualities. Others were “bulk goods” that soon competed with, and in some cases supplanted, similar local commodities. For nearly a century, products based on tropical oils have inundated European markets.
The Invasion of the Tropical Oils
Until the nineteenth century, people everywhere obtained the fats in their diet from local products. To be sure, there has been trade in fat-rich substances, such as olive oil in the Mediterranean, ever since antiquity. Later, Hanseatic traders did business in linseed oil from Russia and lard and suet from northern Europe, but the tonnages involved were never very large. So the countries of the south relied on olive oil, and the countries of the north relied on animal fats—lard “for the mouth” and suet “for making things.” Oils derived from colza, poppy seed, linseed, and hemp were also used. Oil mills were scattered throughout the countryside. Finally, midway between these liquid and solid fats were other substances such as walnut oil, goose fat, and duck fat, all of which were used in certain regions of France especially. In the nineteenth century, however, within the space of a few decades, this neat picture was demolished.
THE EARLY YEARS (1820–70) The change was triggered, in England initially, by the Industrial Revolution, which created new needs. The supply of animal fats and fish oils proved insufficient to meet the growing demands of the soap and stearin industries (stearin, an ester found in animal fat, is used in processing textiles and in making soap and other products). Between 1801 and 1851, British soap consumption more than tripled—from 24,100 to 85,053 tons. By 1912 it had reached 366,000 tons. Meanwhile, with the advent of steam power, better lubricants were needed for machine parts milled to ever closer tolerances and required to operate at ever higher speeds. To meet these needs, Europeans turned to palm oil from Guinea and to coconut oil from India. When the slave trade was banned after the Napoleonic wars, former slave traders plying the coast of Africa were eventually obliged to look for more “legitimate” cargoes, and for English captains palm oil filled the bill nicely. British imports shot up from 887 tons in 1820 to 25,285 tons in 1845. Because of its high acid content (15–20 percent), palm oil processed right on the plantation was initially used only for industrial purposes.
In 1846 Charles Heddle, a merchant from Sierra Leone, shipped four pounds’ worth of hearts of palm to England. The heart of palm is an oil-rich nugget within the palm nut, and Africans had traditionally made little use of it. But German oil processors, especially in Hamburg, began buying large quantities after 1850. They found a way to process the nut to produce an oil of low acid content that could be used for cooking, together with a high-quality feed cake that found immediate application in a country where “scientific” animal husbandry had yielded excellent results. This turn to industrial processing was further aided by the innovative work of Theodor Weber, which sparked a veritable revolution in the industry. Weber, the Samoan representative of the large Hamburg firm J. C. Godeffroy and Company, was aware of the difficulties of exporting coconut oil in barrels, so he advised the natives to dry the coconut meat instead. When prepared it in this way, the dried meat, known as copra, could easily be packed in sacks for convenient shipping. Processed in European refineries, the copra yielded an oil comparable in quality to palm-heart oil and useful for the same purposes, including cooking. Manufacturers of bath soaps also began incorporating both palm and coconut oils into their products because the lauric acid in these oils has excellent foaming properties.
In 1830 the firm of Forster and Smith shipped ten pounds’ worth of peanuts from Gambia to England. But British industrialists, preoccupied with the rapidly expanding market for palm oil, showed scant interest in the peanut, whose oil had few uses at the time since the major applications were already covered. The French paid attention, however. They were familiar with peanut oil and had even experimented with peanut farming in the Landes after 1802. When the Treaty of Paris handed Senegal back to the French, the commercial centers at Saint-Louis and Gorée lay in ruins, and the outlawing of the slave trade made matters even worse. The utter failure of efforts to create plantations in the river delta upstream of Saint-Louis in the 1820s left the colony with only one commercial product—rubber—but the rubber trade along the river was constantly disrupted by skirmishes with Moorish raiders. When newly arrived merchants, mostly from Bordeaux, encouraged the local farmers to grow peanuts, Senegal at long last discovered the cash crop it needed. By the late 1830s soap makers in Marseilles had proved that peanut oil could be used to make soap, and before long it was also competing with olive oil in the kitchen. Apparently peanut oil was even fraudulently passed off as olive oil, to judge by a gibe attributed to Léon Say: “Peanut, a small nut used to produce olive oil.”
A CENTURY OF MONOPOLY IN TROPICAL OILS From 1870 on, events played a key role in promoting the use of tropical oils in Europe. To begin with, there were the effects of the “agricultural revolution.” Farming was intensified as fields once allowed to lie fallow were planted with crops intended as fodder for animals. Livestock producers required ever greater quantities of diet supplements for their animals, and oil cakes were often used. Most important of all, the sugar beet became a basic crop in regions with alluvial soil, where traditional crops had first been supplanted by oil-bearing plants such as colza, poppies, and rape, which, despite small yields, provided work in the slack seasons of the year. During the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, most rural oil refineries that had not been modernized shut down, thus allowing “deodorized” oil from Tunisia to gain a foothold. In Germany, the amount of land devoted to oil-bearing crops (linseed, rape, poppies, and colza) decreased by two-thirds between 1870 and 1900. These products of coastal marshlands were too costly to compete with exotic imports admitted without tariffs. In 1932, before the modest stimulus to domestic production attempted by the Third Reich, production of table oil from local raw materials had fallen to 2,000 tons, whereas consumption had risen to 150,000 tons. In 1938 western Europe consumed approximately 3.5 million tons of vegetable oils but produced only 1.1 million, mainly olive oil. By the early 1960s, after most of the former European colonies had achieved independence but before the conclusion of a Common Market accord on oils and fats in July 1967, the six member nations of the Common Market were producing only about 20 percent of what they consumed. The deficit was covered primarily by tropical oils.
In the early years of the colonial era the foreign sources of oilseed expanded, and most countries admitted these raw materials duty free in order to compensate for the shortfall of domestic production. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had a dramatic impact in clearing the way for significantly increased imports from India, peanuts and sesame especially. In 1929 a record 1,770,000 tons of cargo passed through the canal. Starting in the 1880s, large quantities of cheap cottonseed oil flowed into western Europe from the United States. After special refining to remove the toxic ingredient gossypol, much of this found use in food preparation. In addition, railroad building in West Africa before World War I made it possible to extend the area in which peanuts were grown in Senegal. Later, the conquest of the French Sudan and especially northern Nigeria added still more sources of supply, which could avail themselves of the outlet to the sea provided by the opening of the Kano-Lagos rail line in 1911. The influx of additional oilseed had already led to a sharp decline in prices at the end of the nineteenth century.
New uses for imported oilseed were developed as import tonnages increased. Marseilles showed the way in the 1830s. When the supply of olive oil fell short of demand, Marseilles began importing linseed from the Levant. Liverpool became the port of entry for palm oil, Hamburg for heart of palm. Before long, however, all three major ports were receiving shipments of all types of oilseeds and oils, mostly destined for domestic markets, whereas a fourth port, Rotterdam, reexported much of what it received, apart from what was needed as raw material for local margarine manufacturers. In 1900 each of these ports received approximately 500,000 tons of oilseed along with substantial tonnages of a variety of oils. In addition, certain other ports, such as Dunkirk and Bordeaux, specialized in peanut oil.
Large technologically advanced oil-processing plants in port cities soon replaced the small rural refineries of another era, and locally grown raw materials lost nearly their entire market share to imports. After 1870, petroleum derivatives replaced vegetable oils for most nonculinary purposes other than soap and stearin. First kerosene and then gas lamps supplanted oil lamps, and by 1900 mineral oils had taken over the lubricant market as well. As local vegetable oil production steadily decreased, the population of Europe continued to grow and cities continued to expand. This led to changes in eating habits: people were increasingly likely to use dressings on fresh foods and developed a taste for fried foods, which could be prepared easily. The average standard of living also rose. As a result, demand for cooking oils increased rapidly. In the mid-nineteenth century, “direct” intake of fats (as opposed to “invisible” fats in foods) was 22 pounds per year; by 1930 this had risen in the Netherlands to 44 pounds and in Germany and Great Britain to 38.6 pounds. Table oil consumption was modest, but the manufacture of margarine, which partially supplanted butter, absorbed vast quantities of tropical oils. In France per capita consumption remained under 28.6 pounds, mainly in the form of liquid oil and, to a lesser extent, margarine. Improved refining techniques made oils once limited to industrial uses available in the kitchen, and a certain homogenization of taste made various types of vegetable oil all but interchangeable as buyers made their choices on the basis of price rather than taste. Some oils did succeed in attracting a loyal clientele, however.
Peanut oil is a case in point. Its success, particularly in France, was related to its high “smoke point,” which made it especially useful for frying. New processing techniques opened up new uses for certain oils; hydrogenation, for example, could convert liquid oil into a thick, spreadable substance, and cracking made it possible to separate liquid from solid components.
The development of new products had a major impact on the use of oils and fats. In 1866 Napoleon III announced a competition to develop a healthy, economical, easy-to-preserve new fat for the working class as well as for the army and navy. The chemist Mège-Mouriés won the prize for his work on “oleomargarine,” a product made from rendered beef emulsified with a mixture of water and casein prior to churning. In 1871 he sold his formula to two Dutch butter manufacturers, Jan Jurgens and his competitor Van den Bergh. The product was well received, and the margarine business thrived to the point that the two industrialists built new factories in Belgium, Germany, and England. In 1895 margarine production reached 300,000 tons, or roughly one-tenth that of butter. Success was assured by the low price of margarine, less than half that of butter, except in France, where, under pressure from cattlemen, discriminatory measures were enacted against margarine.
This technology-driven expansion of the market was very good for oilseed imports. In 1899 animal fats still accounted for 70 percent of the market, but by 1928 their share had fallen to just 6 percent. In the same period the share of hydrogenated oils and solid fractions of liquid oils rose from 23 percent to 89 percent. The triumph of margarine was consolidated in 1928 when the two Dutch manufacturers, now merged, joined with the British soap giant Lever Brothers to create the huge multinational Unilever. The margarine trust was born. With plantations in Africa and the Pacific and purchasing subsidiaries such as the United Africa Company, Nosoco, and the Compagnie du Niger Français, Unilever made sure that its vast clientele would remain loyal to its tropical-oil-derived products.
In addition to margarine, the late nineteenth century witnessed the development of another new product for the kitchen—shortening. After finding use first in the United States and India, various types of shortening eventually captured a significant share of the European market as well. The brand name best known in France was Vegetaline, which gives an indication of the composition of the substance, a mixture of nonemulsified vegetable oils with animal fats. With hydrogenation the manufacture of shortening became an important use for the less expensive oils such as soybean and cottonseed.
After World War I the supply of oilseed to Europe was restored. The supply system was reorganized during the Great Depression of the 1930s, which affected the colonies just as much as it did the mother countries. In order to rescue the economies of their colonial possession, the major powers established zones of imperial preference. France, for example, enacted a law in August 1933 imposing tariffs on “foreign” oilseeds. This was followed up by an executive order of January 1934 guaranteeing each colonial product a specific share of total metropolitan imports. For peanuts in the shell, palm oil, and hearts of palm, the quota was set at 99 percent. In other words, the French domestic market was all but closed to imports from non-French colonies. In Great Britain, the steps taken were less public, but Unilever played a key role throughout Europe. Imperial protectionism was further reinforced after World War II. In France an executive order of November 1954 created a protected market in liquid oils within the so-called franc zone.
A MODEST COMEBACK FOR TEMPERATE-ZONE OILS SINCE 1960 As the former European colonies gained independence, they lost their monopolies of certain markets and were forced to compete internationally on the basis of price. The six member states of the European Common Market, recognizing the seriousness of their shortfall in oil production, decided to admit all oilseeds duty free. This measure left the door wide open to competition from American soybeans, and livestock ranchers switched to soy-based feeds as well. The oil yield of soybeans is just 17 percent by weight, but soybean oil is a natural by-product of the manufacture of animal feed, and its low price ensured that in Europe it would become the primary oil for salad dressings and cooking. Peanut oil, being much more expensive, was used exclusively for frying. Some restaurants preferred less costly oils, however, and, as dining out increased, this further limited the market for peanut oil. Consumption of 900,000 tons in 1960 had decreased to just 250,000 tons in 1993 in the twelve countries that now make up the European Community. Meanwhile, India, faced with explosive population growth, shifted to using peanuts for food rather than export. Among African countries, only Senegal is still shipping peanut oil. Overall, African production has decreased on account of bad weather and disastrous mismanagement by “parastatal” marketing organizations.
As tropical oil imports declined, domestic European production increased dramatically. Faced with wartime shortages, lawmakers took steps to encourage the growing of oilseed plants. Later the Common Market set attractive price guidelines to encourage production still further.
On the surface it might appear that consumption of tropical oils nearly doubled in thirty years from 1,200,000 tons to 2,320,000, but much of that total went to uses outside the kitchen. The sources of palm oil have changed completely: Africa is now out of the picture, Malaysia in. But nutritionists have been highly critical of the use of these oils. They blame many common afflictions of advanced industrial societies—obesity, high cholesterol, heart disease—on excessive consumption of fat (in excess of 66 pounds per person per year). Saturated fats are thought to be especially bad, while unsaturated fats are believed to be healthier. Sunflower and safflower oil are high in the latter. Safflower, a plant native to the Orient but today grown primarily in Mexico and the United States, has a fat content that is 78 percent linoleic acid, which is unsaturated. According to today’s experts, the ideal diet would consist of one-third monounsaturated fats, one-third polyunsaturated, and one-third saturated. If this goal were achieved, it would mean a reduction in consumption of animal products and fats from tropical oils. In Europe the triumph of tropical oils is definitely a thing of the past.
Imported Fruits and Vegetables
Only a few civilizations have opted for a diet based on fruits and vegetables. Coconut and breadfruit are of course important staples in the South Sea islands. Plantain plays an important role in the jungle cultures of tropical Africa. And dates are fundamental for the people of the Sahara, just as figs and apricots once were for the inhabitants of the many hilly areas bordering the Mediterranean. For temperate Europe, however, fresh fruits and vegetables were never more than supplements to a diet based on cereals, tubers, and dried beans. They were a refreshment and a treat, not a staple.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, consumption of fruits and vegetables was essentially limited to locally produced items, and the kitchen calendar followed the garden calendar. When Nicolas Appert developed a technique for sterilization by heat at the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, it became possible to preserve vegetables so that they tasted almost fresh.
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES AND THE OPENING OF THE EUROPEAN MARKET The second half of the nineteenth century was in many ways a richly inventive period. New techniques developed at that time paved the way for a considerable expansion of the area from which Europe could draw fresh fruits and vegetables. A revolution in agronomy yielded improvements in the plants themselves. Nurserymen developed new varieties that bore fruit earlier or later, yielded more, or tasted better. Advances in transportation, including ever more rapid railroads and steadily diminishing freight costs, revolutionized the geography of agriculture. No longer did fruits and vegetables have to be grown near the markets in which they were sold. Wherever the climate was propitious—in the “fruit belts” of Brittany and Cornwall, for example, but primarily in the south of France, in the Rhone and Garonne valleys and Languedoc and Roussillon—growers could take advantage of longer growing seasons and beat truck farmers to market with early spring fruits and vegetables. City dwellers rejoiced in these “first fruits” and enjoyed the extension of the season at both ends.
As transit times decreased, the center of supply moved steadily southward, even across the French border into Spain and Italy. Southern farms expanded to supply customers in the north. In the United States, growers in “Mediterranean” California and “subtropical” Florida were linked to the northeastern urban populations. Technological progress also affected ocean transport. Thanks to improvements in sailing ships, freight charges dropped by three-quarters between 1820 and 1870. The advent of the steamship extended this trend to 1935, with a brief interruption just after World War I; freight costs dropped by another half as speeds increased still further.
Shortened transit times made it possible to envision shipping products that could not have withstood long voyages. With the advent of refrigeration technology, time became even less of a factor. In 1876 the Frenchman Charles Tellier was the first to build a ship equipped with a refrigeration system, which he called le frigorifique. Before fruit could be shipped, however, numerous improvements were required. In the process of ripening, for instance, fruit gives off heat and various gases, especially carbonic acid, so efficient ventilation systems were needed as well. After 1890 refrigeration equipment became available for overland transportation, and freight terminals were equipped with storage and ripening facilities. Refrigerated ships, trucks, railway cars, and freight containers benefited from a whole series of technological refinements. All of these things required substantial investment, yet the overall cost of shipping fruit remained low enough not to discourage consumption. In the United States in the 1930s, the cost of shipping oranges from California to the East Coast amounted to less than one-fourth of the retail price. In France in 1924, the cost of shipping bananas by sea accounted for only 13.5 percent of the wholesale price at the point of entry.
CITRUS FRUITS, BANANAS, AND PINEAPPLES: FROM LUXURY ITEMS TO MASS CONSUMPTION Within the space of a few decades, citrus fruits, bananas, and pineapples went from being luxury goods to items of mass consumption.
First cultivated in Southeast Asia, citrus fruits were soon imported into western Asia and then brought by Arabs to the Mediterranean basin. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they were grown in Italy and Spain in the Middle Ages and in Provence, especially the Hyères region. People in Paris and other northern cities were eating them as long as ago as the fourteenth century. But for a long time they remained expensive, until new methods of transportation by ship and train brought them within reach of consumers of more modest means. At the turn of the twentieth century, oranges and tangerines were still luxury goods, and many families indulged in them only during the Christmas season. For a long time, moreover, they could be found in the markets only from November to April, when locally grown fruits were unavailable in the countries of the Northern Hemisphere.
Many factors influenced the growth of demand in Europe, which was very rapid after World War I. Europeans followed the lead of the United States, where annual per capita consumption reached 66 pounds by the 1930s, twice as much as in Great Britain and four times as much as in France. And citrus fruits are not only delicious; they are also rich in vitamins, especially vitamin C. This proved to be a decisive factor: people ate citrus fruits because they believed them to be healthy and therapeutic. Nutritionists prescribe them for people on low-calorie diets. Because it is tedious to peel oranges, most consumers preferred to get their vitamin C by drinking orange juice. Once again, the United States set the pace, and orange juice became an essential part of every American breakfast. This new fashion had two important consequences. First, eating oranges, once a winter ritual, became a year-round activity. To meet the demand for oranges during the summer, new growers set up operations in the Southern Hemisphere in places like South Africa and Brazil, which began exporting large quantities of fruit in the 1930s. Second, growers took advantage of the brisk trade to introduce new products. The grapefruit, for example, was not accepted in the United States until 1910, but from then on it was much in demand both for its juice and for the fruit itself, which was cut in pieces and served with sugar. By 1939 South Africa and Palestine had began to produce both grapefruit and pomelo, and sales have risen sharply since the late 1950s. New varieties of fruit were also developed to supply the market during the winter: tangerines and clementines both had the additional advantage of being seedless and were immediately accepted because they are easy to peel and quarter.
Eminently decorative in gift baskets, delicious to eat, full of vitamins, a good source of juice as well as fruit, and useful in making candies, pastries, ice cream, and marmalade, citrus fruits are central to the diet of western Europe, which consumes some ten million tons a year.
The banana has also become a major consumer product in industrialized countries. In 1870, Lorenzo D. Baker, the captain of the schooner Telegraph, was looking for cargo to fill his ship’s empty hold. In Jamaica he took on a shipment of bananas and managed to deliver them in good condition to Boston, where they fetched an excellent price. By general agreement, this event marked the beginning of an international trade in bananas, which was close to a million tons in 1910, had risen to 2.3 million by 1930, and reached 9 million in 1990. Bananas account for eight-ninths of the world’s imports.
An exotic fruit at first, today the banana has become commonplace throughout the temperate zone, as common as apples or citrus fruits, no doubt because it can be purchased year round. Though prized as a dessert, it is no less valued for its nutritional qualities. Indeed, at just 90 calories per 100 grams, it is the nutritious fruit par excellence, good as a quick snack or for rounding out a light meal. The old slogan “A banana is as good as a steak” is probably obsolete today now that nutritionists are recommending reduced caloric intake, but the fruit is still notable for its high energy and vitamin content (20–22 mg of glucides, 10 mg of vitamin C) and abundant minerals. Of course, not everyone who eats a banana is aware of its nutritional benefits, but another gift of nature is plain to the naked eye: the fruit is easier to eat than many other types of fruit. With so many pluses, it is easy to understand why some people look on bananas as the perfect fruit. Still, a number of banana derivatives, such as dried and pureed bananas, banana flour, banana flakes, and even banana marmalade, have failed to attract a loyal clientele.
The success of this fruit, which originated in Southeast Asia and was spread throughout the tropics by the Spanish and Portuguese in the Age of Discovery, was not due solely to its intrinsic qualities, however. It depended in large part on the enterprising spirit of a handful of pioneers and, later, on the efficiency of the “integrated” companies they created. The banana trade evolved in parallel in western Europe and North America as the first regular shipments led to a rapidly expanding trade.
Between the two world wars, however, the European market for bananas was disrupted by the protectionist policies adopted by the imperial powers. In 1926 the British government took steps to protect growers in Jamaica, which remained the world’s leading banana producer in 1935. In 1928 Italy imposed heavy tariffs on foreign bananas in order to encourage production in Somalia. France also established tariffs in 1931 to encourage its colonies to produce more bananas. In 1930 the colonies were supplying only 6 percent of France’s needs, but by 1938 colonial shipments of 190,000 tons all but met the demand.
World War II disrupted trade, but recovery came rapidly as the shipping fleet was rebuilt in the 1950s. When various diseases affected banana production in Central America, one variety of banana was substituted for another. Some large multinationals were reorganized because of difficulties in dealing with the authorities in the countries in which they operated (United Brands was formed in 1968). The shift from one variety of banana to another led to further changes in the method of preparing the fruit for shipment and display. Grocers no longer separated individual bananas from the bunch. Bananas ceased to seem especially exotic. Careful selection and ripening reduced losses in transit warehouses and stores, to the benefit ultimately of the consumer.
Western European consumption rose dramatically from 700,000 tons in 1950 to 3,820,000 tons in 1990, an increase of 445 percent versus just 113 percent for the United States. Germany took the lead among European nations with a per capita consumption of 30.8 pounds compared with 19.8 for the French and British. The Common Market countries have two sets of arrangements with their suppliers, and differences between these two systems have thus far prevented any agreement about how to deal with banana imports. Germany and the Netherlands buy their bananas on the open market and levy no import duties, whereas France guarantees that a certain quota of its imports will come from the West Indies; Spain does the same for the Canary Islands. The former colonies enjoy a theoretical advantage in having their bananas admitted duty free. No solution to this problem is in sight, nor do efforts by major international organizations appear to have accomplished much in the way of bringing order to world banana markets. Even if there were an agreement, its only probable effect would be that of ratifying the status quo, for the major consuming countries appear to have reached their limit on imports. The producing countries were counting on increased demand from eastern Europe, but additional imports from that quarter seem unlikely at present.
Another tropical fruit that is produced today in vast quantities and traded internationally is the pineapple (close to 10 million tons are produced annually). Anointed by Father Dutertre the “king of fruits because it wears a crown,” the pineapple was probably known in Spain as early as 1535 and in France by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Louis XIV is said to have sampled the first pineapple produced in his greenhouses at Versailles. Such hothouse production was not uncommon in Europe up to the end of the nineteenth century. At elegant banquets and dinners in the middle of the century, it was customary to serve pineapple for dessert, with its “crown” intact. In Flaubert’s Education sentimentale (1869), a woman orders a pineapple salad in a restaurant. Later in the century, however, when citrus fruits and bananas were gaining wide acceptance, the pineapple was still confined largely to the upper classes because of its high cost. The fruit was no longer cultivated in western Europe, and the needs of the continent were supplied by plants raised in unheated greenhouses on Madeira and in the Azores. Puerto Rico shipped a few tons a year to the northeastern United States, and after 1860 attempts were made to grow pineapples in Florida. But frequent frosts forced growers to give up these efforts at about the time of World War I.
Still, many people became accustomed to eating pineapple, but from the can rather than as fresh fruit. In the 1880s tests were made of the feasibility of canning sliced pineapple in a sweet juice made by squeezing the core of the fruit and adding parings from the rind. On the eve of World War I, a miraculous machine, the ginaca, was perfected: with this device it was possible to process fifty pineapples a minute. Mass-produced canned pineapples from Hawaii were distributed by such major firms as the Libby Company and Dole Hawaiian Pineapple. Americans liked the taste, and the fruit was soon shown to be rich in vitamins as well, especially vitamins A and E. By the turn of the twentieth century, canned pineapple was also selling well in Europe.
Today, however, people want good fresh food and are unwilling to settle for anything from a can. Canned pineapple can be served at home but never in a good restaurant. This poses a major obstacle to further expansion of the market. Europe currently imports between 600,000 and 700,000 tons, 60 percent of which comes from Thailand and the Philippines. Pineapple juice, a by-product of the canning process, is a drink that many people like but others reject as too sweet. Although often used to make cocktails, it is not really a competitor for the market share currently claimed by citrus juices. Europe consumes just over 30,000 tons of fresh pineapple juice and 40,000 tons of pineapple juice concentrate annually.
Since World War II, the big news has been the increase in shipments of fresh pineapple, which had previously been quite limited. Shipping pineapple by sea poses even more problems than shipping bananas. The fruit must be harvested several weeks before full maturity, packed very carefully, and kept at a very low temperature during transit (below 54 degrees E and preferably around 42 or 43 degrees). Even if all due precautions are observed, the fruit is not always of uniform quality at the point of sale. In recent years, however, pineapples shipped by air have enjoyed considerable success. If harvested when ripe, handled carefully, and shipped within hours, perfect fruit can be sold for just about twice what fruit shipped by sea costs. It has been estimated that at least 30 percent of the pineapple consumed in Europe is shipped by air. Of course, the pineapple is a large fruit and, unlike a banana or orange, is not likely to be eaten by an individual on a whim. It takes a fair amount of effort to prepare it for serving. Hence there are intrinsic limits to the expansion of the market; in terms of tonnage, the pineapple ranks third among tropical fruit imports.
FRESH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES ALL YEAR ROUND Nowadays fresh fruits and vegetables imported from abroad are available on European markets all year round. Air freight, scientific conditioning, and improved shipping technologies have enabled small tropical growers to tap new export markets. Virtually anything grown in the tropics can be sold in Europe today. Just a few decades ago, who had even heard of passion fruit, guava, and avocado? Yet all are now sold in large quantities and used as basic ingredients in many dishes—to say nothing of litchi nuts, mangoes, and Cape currants. Annual avocado imports now exceed 100,000 tons, and other fruits such as mango and papaya have enjoyed a steadily growing popularity. Significantly, diversification of the market has not been slowed by the relatively high prices of many of these new fruits due to limited, poorly organized production and high air freight costs.
One reason for the popularity of imported fruits and vegetables is no doubt the fact that many Europeans and Americans have visited the tropics and developed a fondness for the bountiful gifts of nature found there. When they return from their travels, they buy things that have caught their fancy, some for the snob appeal perhaps, others for nutritional reasons (they somehow believe that fruits that have ripened under the tropical sun are richer in vitamins, say, than fruits that grow elsewhere). Immigrants are sometimes the first to import exotic fruits, and others follow their lead. For example, litchi nuts gained a following after Chinese restaurants began serving them for dessert. Because many imported products are available all year round, they attract a loyal clientele. The mango is a good example. France initially imported mangoes from its former colonies in West Africa, such as Mali and Burkina Faso. Then India and Pakistan got in on the act; after that, Peru, Brazil, and South Africa were able to meet the demand from October through March, just before the West African season, which runs from March to July. Egypt and Israel pick up the slack in the period from August to October.
The story with other tropical fruits is similar. Consumers are delighted to find fruits and vegetables “in season” throughout the year. It is no longer utopian to think of eating green beans, grapes, and strawberries at Christmastime. For many years, growing European vegetables in the tropics was considered just another of the white man’s crazy ideas. But as erstwhile colonial cities grew and former colonies gained their independence, truck farms began to supply the needs of the new urban populations. Plants that grow in Europe during the summer grow in the northern tropics during the “winter.” In the 1970s enterprising farmers in places like Cape Verde, which supplies the city of Dakar, saw that they could take advantage of this out-of-season pattern pattern to ship fruits and vegetables, including string beans, green peppers, zucchini, and strawberries, to France and the rest of Europe by air. Other countries, from Senegal to Kenya to Chile and South Africa, soon copied these initiatives, making grapes, pears, and other fruits available at virtually any time of the year. To be sure, these imports cost more than similar homegrown fruits, but people seem willing to pay the price.
After overcoming many difficulties and coping with numerous failures, foreign growers were ultimately able to win customers by shipping quality products to European markets. To do this, they had to choose their seeds carefully, tend their crops judiciously, and establish farms close to ports or other transportation facilities. They then entered into contractual arrangements with exporters, who learned how to store and prepare foods for shipment by air. Air transport is costly and difficult, for there is often not enough cargo to fill a plane and there is little return traffic from north to south. But as importers and exporters have established closer ties, it has become possible to make more accurate forecasts of future harvests. Within the European Union, the special agency COLE ACP, which includes representatives of both importing and exporting countries, helps promote new products.
In western Europe, the issue of maintaining a high level of agricultural production has been a matter of recent debate, so it is important to point out that, despite the growing success of imported fruits and vegetables on the European market, local production has also increased steadily. Important restrictions do not seem necessary at the present time. Consumers can take comfort in the fact that the whole world is now their garden.
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