Driscoll’s

choi

Dune Lawrence, How Driscoll’s Is Hacking the Strawberry of the Future; The company is determined to breed the perfect strawberry. Bloomberg BusinessWeek, July 31, 2015 (another feature story).
www.bloomberg.com/news/features/ ... berry-of-the-future

Quote:

“Driscoll’s, the largest player in the $5.6 billion US berry market [all sorts of berries].

strawberry “Yield per acre in California has increased almost fivefold since the 1950s.

“The company [Driscoll’s] provides seedling plants to contracted growers. Then, when the growers harvest the berries, Driscoll’s packs, ships, and markets them to retailers. The growers get 85 percent of the revenue; Driscoll’s keeps the rest.  Driscoll’s is a private company and family-owned.

“As soon as they’re [strawberries are] picked, they are inspected and graded on size, color, and sugar content; chilled; and trucked out to customers within hours. It takes about four days by land to get berries to the East Coast.

“One of the [strawberry] varieties stands out on looks alone: a white berry with red seeds. White strawberries were once common * * * Driscoll’s sells it in Hong Kong, where there’s a market for expensive white fruit.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest of the text.
(b) Driscoll's (privately held; Headquarters Watsonville, California; founded in 1904 by Joseph "Ed" Reiter and RO Driscoll)  Wikipedia

(c) "California’s Pajaro Valley * * * Strawberries grow almost everywhere in the world, though nowhere as bounteously as they do along this particular stretch of the California coast, about 95 miles south of San Francisco, where the Pajaro River empties into Monterey Bay.”
(i) Pajaro River forms "the entire border between Santa Cruz County and Monterey County. Flowing roughly east to west, the river empties into Monterey Bay, west of Watsonville, California."  Wikipedia
(ii)
(A) View the top map to see the short border between Santa Cruz county and Monterey County (colored red), in Monterey County, California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterey_County,_California
(B) The Pajaro River Watershed
http://www.pajarowatershed.org/

, where four different shades of green represent four California counties.
(iii) Monterey Bay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterey_Bay
(section 1 Toponymy: in honor of the [5th] Conde de Monterrey, then viceroy of New Spain)

(d) "Today, California produces almost 29 percent of the world’s strawberries—$2.6 billion worth—a lot of that from the 14,200 acres of fields that surround Watsonville and neighboring Salinas."
(i) Watsonville, California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watsonville,_California
(a city in Santa Cruz County; population was 51,199 according to the 2010 census; "European explorers came to the land where they claimed to have seen a big bird along the side of the river * * * which they identified as Rio del Pajaro, or River of the Bird"/ in 1903 was named after Judge John Watson)
(ii) Salinas, California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinas,_California
(county seat of Monterey County; mouth of the Salinas River; The city was named after the word for a "salt marsh" in Spanish, salinas)

(e) Spanish English dictionary
* conde (noun masculine; from Latin comite (which then lost the "i"); cognate of [English noun] count (nobility)):
"count (nobility)"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/conde
* pájaro (noun masculine; from Latin passer sparrow): "bird"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pájaro
* salina (noun feminine; plural salinas): "salt marsh"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/salina