Word: fruit
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Partly, this was insurance for Di Giorgio grapes. Now, if the price is not right, or frost comes early, the fruit king will turn his grapes into wine. But it was also an aggressive invasion of the wine business...
Tough & Tougher. Joe Di Giorgio has been battling ever since he ran away from his home in Sicily at 14. At 19, he was operating his own fruit commission house in Baltimore. At 21, he started the Atlantic Fruit Co., imported bananas in competition with big United Fruit. When it cut prices to fight Di Giorgio, Joe proved that he was tough, too. He invaded United Fruit's European market, became such an annoyance that United Fruit made peace...
...founded the Baltimore Fruit Exchange, bought control of the New York Fruit Auction Corp., extended his jobbing business. When shippers' loans to growers started running as high as $4,000 an acre during the land boom following World War I, Di Giorgio limited loans to $350 an acre. Others scrambled for business he lost. When the boom collapsed, most of them went broke...
...Desert Blossoms. But Di Giorgio had plenty of cash to buy cheap desert and range land in California's Kern County. Irrigated, the desert blossomed with fruit trees and grape vines at Arvin and on a 5,000-acre ranch north of Delano. Since then, production has been the main business of the Di Giorgio Fruit Corp. In 1930, he sold out his prosperous Atlantic Fruit & Steamship Co., an outgrowth of Atlantic Fruit...
About the same time he got a heady taste of the wine industry, souring under Prohibition. Di Giorgio made a deal to deliver grapes free to the Italian Swiss Colony winery in exchange for 90 gallons of wine for each ton of fruit...