Citrus History 2 Nov 2

For California AG today, I'm Mike Stephens, part of the Southern California citrus industry pulled up stakes and headed north. Benjamin Jenkins, Ph.D., University Archivist and Associate Professor, Department of History and Political Science, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Laverne has written a book California Citrus Heritage. He explains how the citrus industry moved from Southern California to the Central Valley during World War Two. More space was needed for the war effort. A large portion of the industry moved north.

Yeah, the reason it ended up in the Central Valley is because by the time World War Two broke out, the United States is, you know, going to war against Japan, Los Angeles and really huge chunks of land in Southern California turn into factories or housing tracts to house all the workers who are coming into Southern California from across the country to either join the military or build aircraft build battleships. So a lot of the orange and lemon producers started to move their trees, move their entire plantations up to the Central Valley because there was, I mean, that's prime agricultural heartland is I don't have to tell you, whereas Southern California is notoriously difficult to irrigate, and they felt that they could essentially make more money up in the Central Valley if they didn't have to worry as much about water. Of course, over the 20th century, water has become such a contentious issue in terms of farming, anyway didn't really work out.