Atlanta Daily World

South Carolina Takes Peach Crown From Ga.

South Carolina has knocked Georgia's southern peach "crown" askew.

According to the Atlanta regional office of the U. S. Department of Commerce not only has South Carolina consistently topped Georgia in peach production in the past five years, but in 1952 the indicated output in South Carolina is some 500,000 bushels more than Georgia's.

The authority for these figures is the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of the Census of the Commerce Department.

In a study of the data, made by Merrill C. Lofton, Commerce Department regional director, it was shown that last year South Carolina led Georgia in peach production by about 1,000,000 bushels and that consistently since 1946 South Carolina has been ahead with the exception of the "short cropped" 1950 when Georgia led by 975,000 to 468,000 bushels.

Back in the early forties, however, such was not the case. Georgia led South Carolina in total production by two to one and better until the "fateful" year 1946 came.

The explanation for it? The Census Bureau in its census of agriculture taken every five years that it's just a plain case of more of a progressive rise in peach trees in South Carolina and a proportionate decrease in Georgia. For example, this census revealed that in 1940, South Carolina had a total of 3,608,308 trees of all ages and in 1950 this number had increased to 4,808,678. Conversely, in Georgia in 1940 the number of all-age trees was 8,587,681 and in 1950 they had shrunk to 5,341,666. Both States reported substantial reductions in number of farms reporting the production of peaches, South Carolina's decline going from 39,063 in 1940 to 21,633 in 1950 and Georgia's from 77,506 to 49,003. This was a 44 per cent drop in South Carolina and 36 per cent in Georgia.

The largest peach-producing State in the country, of course, is California where the annual output will run some 30,000,000 bushels or more.