'Perfect' Apple Pushed Growers Into Debt

Nearly a half-century ago, the farmers in these dun-colored valleys east of the Cascade Mountains set out to create the perfect apple. It would be lipstick red; broad-shouldered; uniform in size, color and crispness; a health food that would look as dazzling as an ornament on a Christmas tree.

In time, they refined the Red Delicious apple into an American icon, fit for a teacher's desk, a child's lunch box, a dieter's dash out the door. The growers produced these apples like widgets coming off a factory line -- far more than they could ever sell. And while many people raved about the apples, other consumers complained that the fruit did not taste like the original Red Delicious.

Losses piled up. And now the bill has come due. Last month, Congress approved and President Clinton signed the biggest bailout in the history of the apple industry, after the government reported that apple growers had lost $760 million in the last three years.

But while apple farmers blame their woes on a variety of troubles -- unfair competition with foreign growers, oversupply, low prices paid by wholesalers -- many of them now talk openly about their own role in the collapse of one of the last sectors of American agriculture still dominated by family farms.

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