Like you, I was brought up with fruit readily available, cheap enough it never seemed "forbidden." If anything, it quickly became boring and not properly appreciated. (Except for in-season and local--that never seems to get old.)
For many decades fruit has been commonly freighted or trucked across America. We are way past the times when an apple and an orange in a Christmas stocking elicited a thrill the way Laura Ingalls Wilder described for her pioneer Christmases.
I admire my friend Mary, who (in her seventies) still considers an apple or an orange a treat, and chooses either regularly for her evening snack. You should hear her go on about a "Clementine" orange--you would think she's enjoying a See's candy.
Sadly I admit I would any day of the week choose a See's dark chocolate and a cup of coffee over an orange for a treat. I just believe in quality per calorie and that's QUALITY in the eye of THIS beholder.
To this beholder, most transported veggies fare better than fruits. I would also rather have a nice green salad over fruit most any time and I do, even if quite honestly a lettuce leaf is more (for me) a vehicle with which to transport a creamy dressing than a tasty thing in itself.(My dad used to say that the truth hurts, and it does.)
If I don't properly appreciate fruits, I know that many people do. They don't just eat fruit for the health of it, they love it. Fruit is both a staple and a pleasure in their households, not something they can easily imagine life without.
When not on sale, our local Wisconsin markets have priced oranges lately at 1.79 a pound. (Are prices similar nationwide?). The "huge" chain (at time of this writing) doesn't even sell oranges individually, it's a bag of pre-picked or nothing.
Recently I wanted one sizable one for a cake, and at the dollar I paid for it I was happy the recipe called for the juice AND the rind, and I even threw in a little pulp to feel I was getting that whole dollar's worth. The cake would last for days and serve several times over, but what about when people just want to eat the orange? For people with modest incomes, a couple of pieces of fruit per day per family member starts to look like a real luxury. Especially when half the weight of the thing (rind, skin, pits, seeds) goes into the garbage.
Avocados lately here have also been approaching 2.00, and just for one, not one pound. Once every few weeks a sale brings them down to .99 ea and that's when they sell. The rest of the time they sit and pucker, sit until they're worthless and have to be thrown out. Then a new batch changes them out, and the whole waste thing starts over again.
It seems crazy, and what is this about? No economist am I, but I have always heard that "prices will reflect what the market will bear." We're not talking organic food consumption here, which is so specialized and regulated at least there is some level of understanding about pricing. (But really? I don't know one family, outside of couples only, who can afford to eat largely organic---and there's something wrong with that picture, too.)Another thing I've always heard is that pricing is of course related to supply and demand. Whatever a shortage is attributed to, if whatever's there is flying off the shelf at high pricing, that price is justified.
I definitely believe that supplies of produce are often affected by climate, but if people can't afford fruit in a good season, what happens then in a poor season? More good fruit goes unsold, wasted.
I don't get this kind of marketing. One would think history makes a good teacher, but it rarely does. Human nature always seems willing to push the boundaries. Get the most one can while giving the least one can get away with. Risk the bottom falling out or the bubble bursting up top--and most of the while here call it the "American" way of enterprise.
I remember as a young child walking with my cousins alongside the orange groves that bordered my Grandma Rosa's property in Placentia, California. Distinct signs were plentiful in these orchards--warnings that anyone (aside from employees) caught picking an orange would be subject to prosecution with penalty of a $500.00 fine. We assumed this meant it didn't have to be off the tree, off the ground would apply too.
Even that scary penalty didn't make the fruit exciting and a challenge to partake of. That I know of, we cousins never risked those warnings. Why would we? Any one of us could go into our respective kitchens and always find good fruit. Some of us even had orange trees in our backyards.
In the marketplace, the penalty for the consumption of good fruit has evolved into a different kind of punishment. If you don't get much of anything out of something you've paid highly for, you feel taken. The new "temptation" with this kind of "forbidden fruit" is a strange one. You WANT to resist it--pass it by,
don't pay the price. It isn't about the taste of it anymore, it's about making a statement. If bananas, grown out of this country and imported in, can be the generally most affordable fruit in the produce section, why can't other fruits grown here come close in everyday affordability? Is it really the cost of doing business "here" versus the cost of doing business "there"?
A conspiracy seems to be saying "Let them eat cake....." and maybe we should.
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