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the global market | robert r. alvarez
The March of Empire
SU M M E R 2007
Mangos, Avocados, and the Politics of Transfer
GASTRONOMICA
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According to the truism, we are what we eat. These
days, most of us delight in eating plenty of guacamole and
mango chutney. But where did those avocados and mangos
originate? When did they shift from being exotic intruders
to part of our daily diets? What were the politics of their
transfer? Most of us haven’t a clue.
In fact, deliberate plant transfer into the United States
dates back to the late nineteenth century, to the period
when Darwinism spurred scientific interest in new typologies and in the recording of new species. This seemingly
innocent and objective process evolved into a dynamic
global strategy of plant exploration and collection that
transformed landscapes and yielded new hybrid vegetable
and fruit varieties. In the United States, plant transfer had
a clear economic base: the us Department of Agriculture
(usda) wanted to provide American farmers with seeds and
plants for the creation of new markets. As a result of usda
policy, farming and the national landscape changed dramatically, if gradually. New hybrids that were developed
in this country became staples in regional and national
markets and ultimately engendered a transformation in
global agriculture.
The pioneers who sought out nonindigenous plants
were by and large men of creative vision and imagination.
The collection of plants and their transfer initially belonged
to a burgeoning botanical science in which new plants were
added to growing and impressive typologies. But economic
reasoning, no less than scientific curiosity, shaped the plant
hunters’ activity. The significant funding involved in organizing their travels and disseminating their work required
administration by government agencies that imposed a
variety of regulations and controls. Today’s network of food
regulations reflects a hierarchy tied not only to health and
safety but also to economics and control.
In the late nineteenth century, the usda sent agents
throughout the world to find new fruit and vegetable varieties suitable for hybrid adaptation and eventual export in
the world market. These agents, largely unknown to most
of us today, formed a cadre of remarkable explorers who
pushed at the frontiers of botanical science and changed
forever what we buy at our markets, plant in our gardens,
and cook for our meals.
The Plant Hunters
David Fairchild (1869–1954). David Fairchild, a botanist
and bureaucrat, grew up in Kansas in the 1870s as a member of America’s intellectual elite. He studied at the Kansas
State College of Agriculture, where his father was president,
and then at Iowa State and at Rutgers, where his uncle, a
distinguished biologist, taught. He eventually married one
of Alexander Graham Bell’s daughters. Fairchild came
to Washington in the early 1890s, where he joined the
Department of Agriculture and made several explorative
forays abroad. Indeed, while working for the usda, Fairchild
himself introduced more than twenty thousand exotic
plants into the United States, among them mangos, alfalfa,
nectarines, dates, horseradish, bamboos, and after a trip
to Japan, the first flowering cherries of Washington, D.C.
In 1889 he convinced the us Congress to allocate twenty
thousand dollars to create the Office of Foreign Seed and
Plant Introduction (ofspi) and subsequently became its first
director. Fairchild’s intention, like that of the usda in general, was to support an applied botanical science to provide
American farmers with what they called “economic plants”
for market development. To achieve that goal, he sent usda
agricultural explorers, known as “plant hunters,” to collect
thousands upon thousands of seeds and plants suitable for
America’s farms, home gardens, and city landscapes.
The term “economic plants” suggests the motivation
behind the newly created office. Rather than search for new
botanical specimens solely for the sake of science, the agricultural explorers went to the exotic, non-Western regions of
the world to seek and capture specific plants and seeds that
could prove to be commercially viable. They worked on the
margins of what they believed to be the “civilized world,”
gastronomica: the journal of food and culture, vol.7, no.2, pp.28–33, issn 1529-3262. © 2007 by the regents of the university of california. all rights reserved. please direct all requests for permission to
photocopy or reproduce article content through the university of california press ’ s rights and permissions web site, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. doi: 10.1525/gfc.2007.7.3.28.
Above: Joseph F. Rock on horseback in Tibetan dress.
the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis when Fairchild
broug ht him into the ofspi and asked him to travel to
East Asia in search of plants that might have economic
value. Between 1905 and 1918, Meyer went on four long
expeditions. His first, to Shanghai and Manchuria, lasted
from 1905 to 1908. From the Far East, he shipped back
specimens of persimmon, lotus, juniper, horse chestnut,
and ginkgo biloba, in addition to thousands of seeds from
Chinese vegetable crops. He also explored China’s borders
with Russian Turkistan, Korea, and Kansu. In all, Meyer
collected tens of thousands of specimens representing 2,500
plant introductions, including soybeans, several new types
of grain, fruit, vegetables, bamboos, Chinese cabbage, elms,
bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts. He also
brought a number of notable ornamental plants to the
West. His best-known introduction is the Meyer lemon,
now prized for its aromatic and nonacidic fruit. Meyer disappeared in 1918 during a time of political turmoil, on what
proved to be his last journey down the Yangtze River. His
body was never recovered.
SU M M E R 2007
photographer unknown. president and fellows of harvard college, archives of
the arnold arboretum.
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using China, Mexico, South America, India, Northern
Europe, and Africa as their hunting fields.
Through his expeditionary travels, Fairchild met and
recruited other botanists and collectors, many of them
distinguished as much by their eccentricities as by their
passion for exotic plant exploration and their eagerness to
penetrate the far corners of the earth. One such collector,
Frank Meyer, exemplified the explorers’ wanderlust. As he
wrote in a 1907 letter to Fairchild: “Our short life will never
be long enough to find out all about this mighty Frans
Nicholas Meijer, Meyer worked as the head gardener at
the Amsterdam Botanical Gardens. Even as a young man,
he preferred solitary wandering, and his passion for botany
took him by foot across Europe through Belgium, Germany,
France, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. Ever restless, he went
to England to work in a commercial nursery but ended up
sailing to New York in 1901, where his mentor, the eminent
director of the Amsterdam Gardens, helped him secure
work in the usda’s Washington greenhouses. Between 1901
and 1905, Meyer visited Mexico, California, and Cuba,
paying his way by working in nurseries.
David Fairchild had heard countless stories about
Meyer and his adventurous travels. Meyer was working at
Wilson Popenoe (1892–1975). As an agent of David
Fairchild, Wilson Popenoe was responsible for introducing a number of tropical specimens to the world market,
and avocados to the United States in particular. The son
of a Huguenot immigrant to Massachusetts, he developed
an interest in horticulture in Costa Rica, where his family
moved when he was nine. There he first encountered the
avocado pear (aka the avocado); there, too, his passions for
gardening, horticulture, and Latin America grew. In his
autobiographical notes, he recalled his initial enthrallment
with plant hunting:
It was just about this same time [1902] that I began to read of the great
plant hunters…All this inspired me, and I began to feel that plant
hunting was just about the most romantic occupation imaginable. Not
only did a chap get to travel in out-of-the-way corners of the world,
but he stood a good chance of bringing home some new fruit, or food
plant, which would add materially to his country’s wealth and happiness. After all, the march of empire had gone hand in hand with the
SU M M E R 2007
transplantation of crop plants from one part of the world to another….2
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In 1913 David Fairchild offered Popenoe a job with
the usda as an agricultural explorer in Central and South
America. In Brazil Popenoe became fascinated with mangos. He also studied and collected other plants, among
them seeds from the joboticaba tree. During World War i,
Popenoe was sent to Guatemala to search for new varieties
of avocado. He spent sixteen months traveling over sixteen
thousand miles on horseback, searching for avocados, visiting coffee fincas, and taking copious notes and photographs.
Escorted and guided by a Kekchi Mayan, Popenoe scoured
Indian hamlets to find plants and seeds. By the late autumn
of 1917, he had selected twenty-three avocado varieties to
bring back to the United States.
Like many of the plant hunters, Wilson Popenoe
wrote prolifically. In 1920 he published The Manuel of
Tropical and Subtropical Fruits, a volume that became
the definitive study of an enormous variety of tropical
fruits, among them avocados, mangos, loquat, guava,
litchi, papaya, dates, and cherimoya.
Joseph Rock (1884–1962). Fairchild also hired Joseph Rock,
who had emigrated from Austria to the United States in
1905. After being diagnosed with tuberculosis, Rock moved
to Hawaii and lived there for more than a dozen years
before joining the usda. In 1920 Fairchild sent Rock to
China in search of the seeds that produced chaulmoogra oil,
used to treat leprosy. Known as an eccentric, Rock traveled
through China in as much luxury as possible. In addition
to training his own Chinese cook in the preparation of
Western delicacies, he carried an Abercrombie and Fitch
portable bathtub on his expeditions and often had porters
carry him to emphasize his status. A self-taught botanist
and accomplished ethnographer, he eventually explored
for the National Geographic Society and taught at Harvard.
Rock published five books on Hawaiian flora as well as
several books and articles on China’s Naxi language and
culture. His journeys resulted in the introduction of conifers, potentilla, primula, and 493 species of rhododendrons
to the United States. He also collected trees for reforestation
in North America’s severe northern climates. In 1924, on a
single expedition, he collected twenty thousand herbarium
species that were distributed to botanical and horticultural
institutions throughout North America and Europe.
Plant explorations continued throughout the first
decades of the twentieth century, even into the Depression.
One of the most productive, the Palemon Howard Dorsett
Expedition of 1929–1931, was initiated by the usda in
response to the growing importance of the soybean as a
food crop. The team of senior plant explorer Palemon
Howard Dorsett, who had begun working for the usda in
1909, and William Joseph Morse, his junior associate, sent
approximately nine thousand plant accessions from the Far
East to Washington D.C., of which some 4,500 were soybean specimens, including microbe-resistant strains. Other
products of the expedition included pressed herbarium
species, insect specimens, native publications, soybean
food products, bamboo items, motion picture film, and
over three thousand photographs from Japan, Korea, and
Manchurian China.3
The Politics
The work of David Fairchild, Frank Meyer, Wilson
Popenoe, Joseph Rock, and Dorsett and Morse is instructive. These agricultural explorers scoured the globe under
the auspices of the usda, searching for new plants and seeds
for American farmers. Such books by David Fairchild as
The World Was My Garden (1938) and The World Grows
Round my Door (1947) encapsulate an ideology that defined
the world as theirs for the taking, justified by the needs of
the American farmer and of us agricultural development.
Literally thousands of “economic plants” were introduced
to American farmers during the heyday of the ofspi.
Right: Frank N. Meyer returning tired but satisfied from a
successful raid in the high mountains. Wu Tai Shan, Shansi,
China, February 25, 1908.
frank n. meyer collection, national agricultural library
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SU M M E R 2007
SU M M E R 2007
However, in a darkly ironic twist, many of the fruits and
seeds the plant hunters introduced to the United States for
market development later became sanctioned from their
countries of origin and were barred entry back into the
States. Until recently, for example, Mexican and Central
American avocados were excluded as us import varieties,
despite the fact that they had originally been hunted in and
brought to the United States from these “foreign areas.” Now,
as imports back into American territory, they are subject to
the scrutiny of usda and Food and Drug Administration
(fda) regulation. Plants that were once freely admitted into
our territory have come under a new postcolonial gaze.
Much of this scrutiny occurs not in the United States
or at our borders, but on foreign soil. Safety measures that
aim to protect the American farmer and public from agricultural pests and infectious diseases also act as a control
over the global market. Fruits and vegetables that once
freely crossed frontiers and national borders have become
subject to strict surveillance. Although the safety and regulatory measures of the usda do protect farmers and the
public from undesirable microbes, offshore exporters often
consider the activities of us inspectors and institutions on
foreign soil exaggerated. More seriously, these measures
appear as a challenge to national sovereignty.
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The history of mangos in the United States illustrates
this convoluted process. Originally from India, mangos
were transferred and introduced to Brazil, Mexico, the
Philippines, Africa, and eventually other tropical colonial
regions of the world by European explorers. In the United
States, mangos are grown primarily in Florida and California,
but domestic production accounts for only about 1 percent
of all mangos marketed in this country; the rest are imported.
Curiously, until 2002, when the Mexican Ataulfo mango
(a Manila variety) was certified for export to the United
States, all mangos imported into the United States were
hybrid seed varieties that had originally been developed by
usda scientists in Coconut Grove, Florida: Hayden mangos
in 1910, Tommy Atkins mangos in the 1920s, and Kents in
1944. In 1945 the Keitts variety was developed in Homestead,
Florida. Among the hundreds of mango varieties grown
throughout the world, these four were the only ones that
the usda allowed in as imports, even though many of the
other varieties are much more flavorful. In other words,
American plant hunters collected mangos in foreign
Below: P.H. Dorsett and his chinese interpreter, Peter Liu, on the
trail near Pa Ta Chu, Western Hills, to the west of Peiping, China.
dorsett-morse oriental agricultural exploration expedition collection, national
agricultural library
Over the last few decades, food safety has become a matter
of increasing concern to American consumers, a concern
heightened by the current governmental obsession with
securing our borders. Recent outbreaks of E. coli and the
fear of terrorist contamination of the food supply have
alerted us to the increasing numbers, types, and quality of
our imported produce. The public expects to be protected
from these threats by regulatory processes, which include
the careful surveillance of foods crossing our borders from
around the world. Food certification has become a standard
process in the global marketing of foods.
notes
1. www.plantexplorers.com/explorers/biographies/meyer/frank-nicholas-meyer.htm.
2. Frederic Rosengarten, Jr., Wilson Popenoe: Agricultural Explorer, Educator and
Friend of Latin America (Lanai: National Tropical Botanical Garden, 1991), 9.
3. Like other agricultural exploration collections, the Palemon Howard Dorsett
Photograph Album Collection is archived at the National Agricultural Library.
www.nal.usda.gov/speccoll/findaids/dorsett/.
SU M M E R 2007
Postcolonial Appropriation and Control
Most of us believe that such regulation, imposed by
the institutions of the state (the usda and the fda), is a
new phenomenon. Clearly, however, this regulation was
spurred not solely by the current need for food security or
by the exponential increase in imports of foreign-grown
produce. Food sanctions, in part, grew out of government involvement in seed exploration and development.
The plant hunters regarded the people and regions they
explored from a hierarchical and often racialized point of
view, and their writings reveal a distanced engagement with
the territories from which they extracted flora. This was an
exotic, impure, chaotic, and uncivilized world, in contrast
to America, which they placed at the global apex. These
plant hunters sought nothing less than the transformation
of the great American landscape through the introduction
of new and economically important plants. How their activity has been absorbed into American ideology is a subject
that remains to be addressed.
The questions I raise here revolve not solely around the
inequality and competitive global forces operating in contemporary export agriculture. The broader implications and
importance of plant transfer in world history are grounded
in the fascinating, colorful, and often admirable exploits of
individual usda plant hunters. But the collective imperative of their actions and ideas reflects a period of colonial
transformation and a geopolitical vision of a new world hierarchy. This was the beginning of the major metamorphosis
of global agriculture. The history of plant hunting a century
ago relates to the broader global changes of the period,
to be sure, but it also laid the foundation for the current
system of postcolonial appropriation and control, to which
food security and certification belong.g
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territory and brought them back to the United States, where
they developed them into hybrids that they reintroduced
to the tropical world. Now the usda regulates the reentry
of foreign mangos by means of strict certification measures.
This is, without a doubt, maximized control.
Mangos imported from Mexico and South America
must conform to highly technical engineering protocols.
All us-bound mangos must be submerged for 75 minutes in
a hot water bath of 115 degrees Fahrenheit. usda scientists
created this process, called the hot water treatment (hwt),
in 1987, when the Environmental Protection Agency outlawed the chemical pesticide dietheline bromide. Today
the usda keeps a watchful eye on more than sixty mango
export packing sheds in Mexico. The hwt requires complex computer technology, sophisticated engineering, and
major capital investment. Regulation is no small undertaking considering that almost five hundred thousand boxes
of Mexican mangos entered the United States in 2006.
American government representatives live in-country and
oversee the certification process, with Mexican nationals deputized as usda inspectors. Additionally, both the
usda and fda inspect and certify production fields and
fruit-packing houses. Although the usda-imposed controls
were initially put into place as safety measures to protect
American farmers and consumers, they have now reached
far and deep into Mexico and other exporting nations. The
bottom line is that mango producers and distributors who
expect to export their product to the United States must
conform to the hwt and other complicated forms of security certification.