Conception de la didactique de la traduction

The following is taken from the 1988 publication Orange County, by Steve Emmons, and as published by Henry N. Abrams, Inc. Emmons, much like Walker, provides an excellent overview of the history of the orange industry in Orange County.

The first orange tree in Orange County was probably planted by William N. Hardin, a medical doctor and Anaheim's justice of the peace, who, in 1870, bought two barrels of rotten Tahitian oranges and planted some of the seeds. A more portentous event occurred in 1872 when Albert B. Chapman, a founder of the town of Orange, brought some navel orange trees from Florida and set them in his San Gabriel groves. He noticed that a few of the trees were different from the others, and one of his employees, a Spaniard, named them Valencia orange trees, after the region in eastern Spain. (Actually, the Valencia orange came from the Azores.) The name was a distinct improvement over what they were called previously: Hart’s Tardiff.

Valencia oranges turned out to have tremendous advantages: First, they are much juicier than navels, and second, they ripen at the peak of summer, when their cool juice has much more consumer appeal. (Navels ripen in winter.)

In 1875, the first Orange County grove of Valencias was planted by R. H. Gilman of the Southern California Semi-Tropical Fruit Company. His grove was on what is now the California State University campus in Fullerton, and it soon revealed the Valencia’s third advantage: Valencias not only tolerate planting nearer the coast, they thrive there. The Valencia grows better in Orange County than anywhere else.

More planters tried the Valencia. In 1886, the same year the first diseased vineyard was dug up, the Santa Ana Herald remarked on the “new orange, which promises to become a great favorite with growers.” The Valencia had arrived at exactly the right time.

Not only was a ready supply of land available for the citrus industry, but by 1886, Orange County had a vast irrigation system. The five-mile ditch from the Santa Ana River to the Anaheim vineyards kept the town green during the drought of the mid-1860s, and by 1869 the colony was selling water to outsiders. At about the same time, settlers arriving in the Placentia area discovered that getting water from a well required digging and shoring up a shaft 130 feet deep. They, too, resorted to a ditch from the river—and the twelve-mile Cajon Canal—but digging it took four years, due to difficult terrain and a string of financial setbacks and lawsuits. It was completed only after a court ordered the formation of the Anaheim Union Water Company to own and manage both the Anaheim and Cajon ditches. Growers across the river in Orange dug their first ditch in 1870, which eventually led to the formation of the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company. Many smaller companies dug ditches from the river and from major creeks, but well into the twentieth century, the Anaheim Union and the Santa Ana Valley companies provided most of Orange County’s irrigation water. Supplemented by wind-driven, then engine-driven well pumps, the county’s water supply was reliable and ready for a citrus boom.

The railroads made the markets for citrus crops accessible and gave the Orange County citrus industry its final shove down the launching ramp. The first railroad shipment from Orange County headed for Des Moines, Iowa in 1883. By 1887, the Santa Fe railroad was competing with the Southern Pacific for Orange County’s railroad business, and freight rates fell. That year, four hundred railroad carloads were shipped from Orange County.

Though rapid, the resulting expansion of the Orange County citrus orchards was not without incident. Tiny scale insects, so called because of the round, waxy scale they secrete and live under, were at times annoying, at times threatening to the entire industry. Black scale appeared almost simultaneously with the orange trees, and while the insects themselves did not attack the trees, the black mold that thrived on their secretions so covered the fruit that each orange had to be hand washed before it could be sold. Red scale, though, killed the branches they inhabited. The insects had been inadvertently imported to Orange County along with Australian navel orange trees in 1873. The only defense growers had against the red scale was to prune away infected branches; by the late 1880, the infestation had reduced a third of the orange trees to skeletons.

Growers experimented with a mixture of various oils and caustic soda as an insecticide and found it helped control both black and red scale. Later, individual trees were enclosed in tents and hydrocyanic gas was blown inside—an effective, if laborious, method. The most effective countermeasure, like red scale itself, was imported from Australia: Rodolia cardinalis, or the Australian ladybug. Turned loose in the orchards, the ladybug ate the scale insects and others besides.

Growers also faced freezes, which can destroy the fruit and, if severe enough, split trees when their sap becomes frozen. In 1913, overnight temperatures fell to twenty-two degrees on three consecutive nights. Smudge pots were not common yet, so growers burned bean straw in the orchards to ward off the chill, but without success. Losses were enormous. In 1937, cold nights persisted so long that the supply of smudging oil gave out, and the growers turned to burning tires in the groves. The resulting soot covered Orange County for weeks.

Then, in the early 1940s, a virus attacked with devastating results. Its scientific name appropriately was Tristeza, Portuguese for “grief.” Growers called it Quick Decline, because an infected tree simply withered and died in a remarkably short time, perhaps two or three weeks. Spread by aphids, Quick Decline killed 243,920 Orange County orange trees in one year. There was no protection from the virus for old trees, but introduction of a virus-resistant rootstock brought the disease under control in new orchards.

The most threatening pest in the history of the orange industry, however, was the commission merchant, who sold the orange crop and had the Southern California citrus growers at his mercy. In the early years, growers were isolated from their Midwestern and Eastern markets, where sales prices fluctuated so dramatically and so rapidly the growers had no idea what prices to expect. Commission merchants took full advantage and accepted orange crops on consignment only, leaving all risk to the growers. Sometimes a grower received in return only a bill for shipping, with the explanation that the market was glutted the day his crop arrived, and proceeds didn’t even cover freight costs. Growers were justifiably suspicious. Twice, the growers tried to form a marketing cooperative of their own, succeeding at last in 1893 with the Southern California Fruit Exchange. It gave growers some bargaining muscle for the first time and dominated the market later as the California Fruit Growers’ Exchange (1905), then as Sunkist Growers (1952).

The value of marketing was learned as early as 1880 when an Orange County grower, Albert B. Clark, started wrapping each orange in tissue before packing it into the crate. Other growers considered this frivolous until they learned that Clark’s oranges consistently drew higher prices. When the exchange was formed, it hired sophisticated marketing experts, who set

about creating the image of the orange as the “golden glory” from the land of sunshine and Old World romance. Their goal was to invade the Midwestern and Eastern markets and there convert the orange from an exotic fruit for Thanksgiving feasts and Christmas stockings into a staple of the daily diet. Billboards touted “Oranges for Health—California for Wealth.”

Special trains carrying the fruit eastward were adorned with promotional banners. The sunshine image was incorporated into a trademark, Sunkist, which was test marketed in Iowa in 1905, then adopted for all the exchange’s produce. By 1920, “Sunkist” was stamped on the fruit itself.

To encourage consumption, the exchange advertised that anyone mailing in twelve Sunkist wrappers and twelve cents would receive a silver orange spoon. At the time, in fact, virtually all oranges were for eating—until the exchange’s marketing masterstroke of 1916. A bumper crop of oranges was predicted for that year, requiring that the market somehow be expanded quickly. The exchange took a full-page ad in the February 19, 1916, Saturday Evening Post showing a tide of orange liquid and urging readers to “Drink an Orange.” The exchange convinced the Thatcher Glass Company of Gleannette, Pennsylvania, to produce the now-classic opaque glass orange reamer for extracting juice. Just how many were manufactured is not known—probably around a million—but the first shipments sold out speedily, and reamers continued to be popular until electric juicers took their place. In any case, the advertisement and its follow-up put the juicy Valencias at the top of the citrus heap, and Orange County’s citrus industry boomed. Even during 1930, when the Depression was setting in, consumption of oranges increased.

Orange County agriculture as a whole peaked in 1930, and the tally is a reminder that citrus was only the largest of many profitable Orange County crops. During that year, farmers and ranchers grossed fifty-one million Depression dollars, mostly from citrus, walnuts, beans, sugar beets, peppers, tomatoes, and livestock. The agricultural opulence of the region had been remarked upon by the San Francisco Chronicle back in 1898 in an article headlined “One of the Most Prosperous Counties.” It referred to the new, $400,000 beet-sugar factory in Los Alamitos, the olive groves in El Modena (now east Orange) and in nearby foothills, the

“famous celery fields” south of Westminster, and the general improvements, such as better roads, extended rail lines, new telephone servic e to San Diego, and new, steam-powered streetcars between Santa Ana and Orange. Orange County farmers also were growing chiles, lima beans, apricots, apples, pears, and avocados. In 1908, the San Joaquin Ranch (part of the Irvine Ranch) was producing more barley, beans, sugar beets, oranges, walnuts, and olives than any other ranch in California. So sovereign was agriculture in Orange County that by 1938, 86 percent of the land was used for farming or ranching, with the largest portion set aside for citrus.

World War II brought about great changes in Orange County agriculture. Farm workers, able to draw higher wages in wartime factories, quit the fields, leaving growers with a labor shortage. The result was the bracero program, under which the United States Department of Agriculture imported Mexican nationals as farm laborers, then sent them home at the close of harvest. The first braceros (strong-armed ones) arrived in Orange County in 1941; even so, sixteen hundred Jamaicans and five hundred German pris oners of war as well were farm laborers in Orange County during the war. Though intended to be a wartime emergency measure, the bracero program continued until 1964, due to strong lobbying by growers. In the meantime, thousands of Mexicans attracted by farm wages entered the United States illegally

and remained, providing growers and others with a huge pool of black-market labor but also adding to political and social problems, such as overcrowded housing, slumlording, and racial tension, which persisted into the 1980s.

The biggest change, however, occurred at war’s end. The citrus industry had peaked during the war, when many fields devoted to other crops were converted to orange groves. But as the soldiers returned home, and families began looking for homes, a demand for housing in Orange County arose seemingly overnight—and then intensified. Developers found it very easy, and very profitable, to replace an orange grove with a housing tract. The building started near the Los Angeles County boundary and moved southeastward. The result is reflected in the following statistics kept by the Orange County Department of Agriculture.

Between 1954 and 1963, 79 percent of Orange County’s agricultural land was converted to housing, businesses, schools, and highways… By 1967, Orange County’s suburban development had reached as far as the Saddleback Valley and “suburban crops”—nursery stock and cut flowers—had taken over, accounting for 18 percent of all agricultural income, on their way to 48 percent by 1986.

There was no stopping the trend, for even growers who wanted to stay put were being forced out by the new urban pressures. A new housing tract built next to an orchard or field was soon full of people who complained to sympathetic city councils about the sound of tractors in the early morning and the smell of manure. Vandalism of farms and orchards became a problem.

Even more troublesome, a new housing tract or shopping center increased the value of the adjoining farmland, raising its property taxes by huge amounts. In 1965, an acre of lima bean field in Fountain Valley or Costa Mesa was valued at $20,000 to $60,000. That meant a property tax of between $250 and $1,500, even though the return from that acre was only

$200. The easiest, sometimes the only, solution was to sell the land, sending the suburban sprawl that much farther.

The Williamson Act of 1965 allowed “agricultural preserves” to be formed, as a way of keeping farmland taxes down. Counties could agree to tax a grower’s land at the lower agricultural rates if the farmer agreed to keep his land agricultural for ten years. Though at one time ninety-three thousand acres were in agricultural preserve in Orange County, the system did not achieve its purpose. Development was so profitable that the back taxes and penalties for canceling agricultural preserves were no deterrent. By and large, the agricultural preserve benefited the large landholders: The Irvine Company and Rancho Mission Viejo. They owned 95 percent of land in agricultural preserve, land they had not intended to develop in the near future in any case.

Orange County agriculture adapted by shifting to high-value crops suitable to smaller, scattered plots of land that could be rented while the owner awaited development. Besides nursery stock— which, grown in pots, does not require farmland—strawberries became a major cash crop. In 1986, the nursery and flower crops totaled more than $121 million, the strawberry crop more than $64 million. This trend went even further in the growing of

“designer crops” genetically engineered for the expanding fruit and vegetable departments of the grocery stores. Researchers developed such oddities as baseball-size lettuce; golf-ball size cantaloupe; pale -green seedless watermelons; and orange, purple, and ivory peppers. By 1987, many were being grown in Orange County.

Will agriculture disappear from Orange County? The question was posed to the county’s agriculturists in a 1985 newspaper article. Gilbert Aguirre, vice president of ranch operations for Rancho Mission Viejo, thought Orange County agriculture had only twenty to thirty more years. Randy Keim, who ran the University of Califor nia field station in Orange County, thought it would always be present, though in what form he could not predict. Fred Keller, chief of farming operations for The Irvine Company, said his firm was in agriculture only because it made enough to pay the property taxes and break even. If Orange County agriculture disappeared overnight, “you’d never notice it,” Keller said. “It wouldn’t make a ripple?’ In 1988, the Irvine Company leased its farmland to outside growers and withdrew from agriculture altogether.