Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: NBN Book of the Day
Episode: Amanda L. Van Lanen, "The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)
Description: In the nineteenth century, most American farms had a small orchard or at least a few fruit-bearing trees. People grew their own apple trees or purchased apples grown within a few hundred miles of their homes. Nowadays, in contrast, Americans buy mass-produced fruit in supermarkets, and roughly 70 percent of apples come from Washington State. So how did Washington become the leading producer of America’s most popular fruit? In The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture (The University of Oklahoma Press, 2022), Amanda L. Van Lanen offers a comprehensive response to this question by tracing the origins, evol...