Peaches are a minor part of Georgia’s economy, but they’re central to its mythology
SalonThe 2023 Georgia peach harvest is looking bad, although the details are sketchy. Why do Georgia peaches loom so large when they account for only 0.58% of the state's agricultural economy and Georgia produces only between 3% and 5% of the U.S. peach crop? In the 1960s, the commercial peach industry in Georgia and South Carolina nearly ground to a halt because of a syndrome known as peach tree short life, which caused trees to suddenly wither and die in their first year or two of bearing fruit. Increasingly, growers and boosters near the heart of the industry in Fort Valley, Georgia, sought to tell "the story" of the Georgia peach. That was particularly clear in the 1950s and 1960s, when growers successfully lobbied for a new peach laboratory in Byron, Georgia, to help combat peach tree short life.
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