Former Senator Lauch Faircloth :
Sixty years ago, a grocery store carried a few, little, in-season, locally-grown produce. If you wanted some in the winter, you canned it. Except for a very, very few, very, very wealthy people, that was produce. Maybe three percent of the population or one percent, more likely, had access to vegetables and fruit other than the immediate season in which they lived. So at the turn of the century and on into World War I, fresh vegetables were unknown. The fruit and vegetable business really began to pick up after World War II. People had traveled. The standard of living [improved]. They came back and they were not willing to go back into farms. They went to colleges by massive amounts and took jobs not related to agriculture. So all of a sudden there was a demand for produce, which has continued to grow to this day. So many types of produce that used to be strictly local items, all of a sudden – even in the last twenty-five years – have become nationwide and highly accepted and highly sought after.

- Former Senator Lauch Faircloth (1993-1999), successful farmer and businessman

Interview with Former Senator Lauch Faircltoh by Joseph Mosnier, July 16, 1999, Interview I-0070, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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