Kansas Fruit History
Frank Morrison, Professor Emeritus, Kansas State University
Kansas sunshine, soils, growing season and water provide good
conditions for growing fruit. Early recognition of this was made by the explorer
Coronado who wrote to the King of Spain in 1541 after exploring north from
Mexico in what is now the Kansas area.
“The country itself is the best I have ever seen for producing
all the products of Spain. For besides the land itself being very flat and black
and watered by rivulets and springs and rivers, I found plums like those of
Spain, and nuts and very good sweet grapes and mulberries.”
As
Kansas was being settled in the mid eighteen hundreds, fruit plantings were
established for commercial production and self-sufficiency. In 1880, the Kansas
State Board of Agriculture reported 2,386,812 apple, 5,091,549 peach and 935,897
cherry, pear and plum trees. Average tree spacing was at least 30 feet between
tree rows and trees in the row, wider for apples, so the area of fruit tree
plantings was in excess of 9,000 acres. The small fruit area in the same period
was 5,529 acres in vineyards and 6,695 acres in raspberries, blackberries and
strawberries.
With encouragement and assistance by the editor of the Kansas
Farmer, the Kan-sas Horticultural Society was organized in 1869. It was the
first agricultural or-ganization in Kansas. The society was reorganized in 1965
with the Kansas Horti-cultural Society becoming the parent organization for the
Kansas Fruit Growers Association and 9 other horticultural organizations. In
1987 grape growers organized the Kansas Grape Growers and Winemakers
Association.
The
Kansas fruit acreage has declined through the years. Prohibition in 1880 re-sulted
in a significant reduction of the state vineyard acreage by 1900. The most
severe setback to Kansas fruit production (and indeed several Midwestern states)
was due to an Armistice Day freeze in November, 1940. Many fruit trees were
killed outright and others so severely damaged they never recovered. Comparative
labor intensity is a major consideration for fruit producers. For example,
apple, grape or strawberry production requires a minimum of 100 hours of labor
per acre per year. However, only 3 hours or less per acre per year are required
to produce wheat. Also, most fruit crops require 2 to 4 years from the year the
planting is established until the plants or trees are mature enough to bear
fruit and produce a financial return.
The present fruit acreage in Kansas is somewhat less than 5,000
acres. Innovations in fruit production result in increased production per acre
with intensive plantings. Pest management results in high quality fruit with
increased storage periods. Other technologies adapted by Kansas fruit growers,
combined with Kansas sunlight, provide high quality fruit.
Most Kansas grown fruit is marketed through retail sales. You may
drive to the grower farms and pick your own farm fresh fruit, select fruit at a
Community Farmers’ Market, or you may select it in growers’ Farm Markets. For a
wide selection of high quality fruit, you should visit all of these sites to
select your farm fresh fruit.
