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ratio, which gives us a real peach flavor.” Giving shoppers choice, many retailers like to merchandise East Coast and West Coast fruit, says Richter. “We welcome that because our fruit competes very well,” he says. “The retailers like the fact our fruit is different.” Sometimes, retailers may merchandise Southern peaches for considerably lower prices than California fruit, says Richter.
The South’s growing and harvesting prac- tices help produce quality peaches, says Bob Von Rohr, director of marketing for Glass-
boro, NJ-based Sunny Valley International, Inc., which markets South Carolina and New Jersey peaches. “For the most part, with the Southern peach, knowing they stay on the tree longer than possibly other areas, shoppers get more of a ready-to-eat peach from the South than from other areas,” he says.
A big advantage of Southeastern fruit is logistics. “We have an extreme advantage in freight costs to sell to Eastern markets,” says Matt Cornwell, sales account manager for Titan Farms, which grows and ships from
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GEORGIA
Peaches produced in summer months in Georgia are the highest quality, says Will McGehee, partner with Genuine Georgia Group, Fort Valley, GA. “We hang our hat on flavor first,” he says. “Our flavor comes from our climate, which is perfect for growing great peaches. Our flavor also comes from our ability to get the peach off the tree and into the market at the fastest rate possible. We don’t want to store them, we want to sell them fresh. Shoppers don’t want them to taste like a fridge, so time off the tree is pretty critical.
“We are able to get our peaches to just about every metropolitan area within a day. That’s a big deal when you’re dealing with a peach, which isn’t like other commodities which don’t mind being stored, like apples, bananas or citrus.”
The logistical benefits help retailers. “Georgia enjoys important production and marketing advantages, primarily its proximity to Eastern markets and favor- able prices because of early harvests and high-quality fruit production,” says Julie McPeake, chief communications officer with the Georgia Department of Agricul- ture. To give Georgia peaches more time on the tree and less time until it gets to retail customers, most of Georgia’s fruit is picked, packed and shipped in the same day, she says. “We gladly take on this logistical challenge because we are simply obsessed with flavor,” says McPeake. “It’s all we think about.”
The first Georgia peaches were shipped to New York between 1858 and 1860. They were transported by wagon to Augusta, GA, then by shallow-draft boat to Savannah, GA, before being loaded on a steamship. That’s when Georgia earned its “Peach State” designation during the three decades following the Civil War, notes McPeake.
The Fort Valley plateau, where 90 percent of Georgia’s peaches are grown, historically experiences fewer freezes, more consistent rainfall and consistent year-over- year temperatures, says McPeake. pb