Consider: The Sumo Orange
Orange you glad it's citrus season?
Right in the middle of winter, just when you need it the most, citrus season sneaks up on you. Unlike humans, citrus is at its best right in the middle of North American winter. The shelves of your local grocer become filled with varieties you don't see the rest of the year; from Raspberry oranges to Jaffa Sweeties to minneola oranges.
In 2015, I started to hear chatter about “the best orange you would ever eat”: the Sumo. Before the Sumo, I would happily consume a box of tangerines a week, with only an inkling that some were better than others. The Sumo opened my eyes to a whole other side of citrus, but also to the little known world of fruit brands.
Did you notice that some of the citrus varieties I have named are capitalized and others are not? That is because some varieties are “brands” of fruit, owned by corporations or private equity funds. These brand owners market and protect the valuable intellectual property around their fruit like they would with nuclear launch codes. The Sumo is a great example of how BIG FRUIT creates a “luxury fruit.” Today we are going to explore lessons from Japanese fruit branding and fruit gifting (bring back fruit baskets!), all while helping you avoid scurvy this winter.
Design
All citrus comes from one of three species of fruit: mandarin, pomelo and citron. The common orange is actually a hybrid between a mandarin and a pomelo. A grapefruit is what you get when you cross an orange and pomelo.
The Sumo origin story begins in 1972, when a Japanese research station in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, created a hybrid of Kiyomi tangor (a cross of orange and satsuma mandarin) and a Ponkan, a large mandarin popular in Asia. A farmer stole a cutting from the research station and bred (to perfection) an oversized orange that came to be called a Dekopon (デコポン).
This farmer was motivated to create a new kind of fruit because of the role fruit plays in Japanese society. The consensus seemed to be that Japanese people did not need fruit for nutrients, like Europeans did, so fruit became a luxury dessert. If this farmer could create a proprietary luxury orange, it would be very profitable. The resulting $10 orange is considerably on the low end of Japanese luxury fruit culture. The high end of the market is controlled by a 200 year old retail chain, Sembikiya, where you can find melons for over $100, apples for $21 each, and (my personal favourite) square watermelons at their multi-floor emporiums. This article lays out some of the incredible produce on offer, from tennis ball sized strawberries to perfect grapes.
The closest luxury fruit purveyor we have in North America is Harry’s Berries. Started by Harry Iwamoto (a Japanese immigrant) in 1967, this family-owned California farm ships their berries all over the US, selling for $10/box. Recently, Oishii Berry started growing strawberries in indoor vertical farms in New York and charging a cool $50 for 11 strawberries.
The market for luxury fruit is self-perpetuating. Farmers knowing they can get a premium price for differentiated products encourages them to innovate and invest the time in cultivating and harvesting. For example, there are only 400 unstriped watermelons grown each year.
Innovation
North America does not have the same fruit gifting culture as they do in Japan. Instead, innovation in produce has been supported by “premium branded fruit.” The most well-known version of this is the Pink Lady apple. Branded fruits are created when a group of farmers or fruit distributors are granted exclusive Plant Breeder’s Rights, which is the equivalent of a patent in the horticulture world. Farmers will also often get together and control the production, sorting and distribution of a specific cultivar of fruit to create a premium market and ensure consistent quality (appearance, sweetness, etc.).
David Karp, the “fruit detective,” had been trying to source Dekopon oranges in the US for over a decade before he found them. Growing fruit trees from unlicensed stocks is illegal because of the risk of importing and spreading deadly tree diseases. Think of how quickly the elm beetle spread once it found its way over from Asia. Unbeknownst to most consumers, the import of fruit and orchard rootstock is highly controlled.
Karp provides a list of groups that tried to smuggle over Dekopon cuttings to create their own trees. They include a Japanese religious cult and a corporation that illegally propagated over 1,000 trees in the San Joaquin Valley in California before being forced by the government to burn the orchard.
In 1998, a citrus grower named Brad Stark Jr imported the budwood for Dekopon oranges to the US and paid for the Citrus Clonal Protection Program to grow a disease-free version. The process took years! Stark ended up going bankrupt and the budwood was secretly acquired by a citrus distributor named Suntreat. They tried to keep the US Dekopon cultivation a secret until they could grow enough trees to control the market and release a branded version.
Suntreat put the orange through a branding process that resulted in the rejection of names like Tanzilla, Tangimodo and others, landing on Sumo because of the fruit’s heritage, size and the fact that the bump on the top looks like a sumo wrestler’s top knot. Suntreat ended up getting acquired by a private equity firm that now uses this model to market fruit like “Pink Cara Cara” and others. Next time you see something new at your grocer, like Golden Kiwis, know that these are likely also branded fruit.
Sustainability
A single-party owning the farm land, plants and packaging aligns the owners interests towards sustainability. Citrus, by its nature, can only be grown in certain parts of the world. As well, branded fruits tend to consolidate packaging in a single location to allow for quality and supply controls. In the case of the Sumo, every orange is grown within a 60 mile radius of the Suntreat packing facility in California.
AC Foods, which is the corporate owner of Suntreat and the Sumo brand have expressed a commitment to regenerative agriculture. This is a style of farming where there is a focus on ensuring that any nutrients taken from the soil by farming find a way back in. AC Foods’ parent company also owns the farm land (through another fund), and it is in their best interest to grow products that cause the least damage to the soil because they will make money if the value of the farmland appreciates.
To be clear, there are farmers and companies who have more sustainable practices, such as following strict organic guidelines or not using any pesticides. AC Foods did not make anyone available for comment so it is tough to understand the depth of their practices. From the AC Foods 2019 impact report (the most recent available), AC Foods have been able to improve the organic content of the soil they grow in and the number of bees in their orchards. Sumo trees, while self-pollinating, still need bees in order for the flowers to turn to fruits. If you ever find a seed in a seedless citrus, it is probably because a bee cross pollinated the seedless flower with some pollen from a seeded tree!
Cost
With the average Sumo weighing in at 250g, they are a hefty fruit. Outside of Canada, you can find where they are sold on the Sumo site. In Canada, you can find them at Loblaws and through Bondi Produce. Pricing is around $2.50 per Sumo or $5-$6/lb.
Are they worth half the cost of a crate of mandarins? The way in which they are cultivated (picked by hand and cured for 40 days, and then tested to ensure they are almost 2x sweeter than regular oranges) should justify a premium. But you are also paying a premium because production and distribution is artificially constrained, like diamonds. They could be much cheaper and more widely available but the growers have decided to keep the price up.
If you have $2.50 in your pocket and are near a grocer, I think it is worth trying one. Look for one that feels heavy for its size. That means it's juicy.
PS:
David Karp, the fruit detective, thinks the Greengage plum is the sweetest fruit in the world. In an interview he provided that “We had a tree in our yard when I was a kid. It didn't produce fruit very often, but when we did get fruit it was just delicious, and I've been obsessed with finding them again here in the United States.” This leads me to wonder how much of this is about the variety of the fruit vs Karp’s nostalgia. Other than Sumos, freestone peaches are a personal favourite of mine. For the fruit and vegetable obsessed, KCRW’s Good Food podcast features a weekly market report where they talk about a specific fruit and all the varieties that are available. One grower had over 15 different types of cherries!
Citrus season is my favourite season!
Korea has the halla oranges, which originate from Jeju Island, and are very, very similar to Sumo. All delicious.