It was a special time when grapefruit appeared in our grocery store in Green Bay, Wis. This happened in January and lasted a few months. The tart cherries we picked in Door County in August were another signal that fresh fruit was available for only a few weeks.

Today you can find grapefruit, apples, oranges, dragon fruit (from Vietnam) or clementines almost every month of the year. This week I bought organic cherries from Chile and blueberries from Peru at King Soopers.

Rising consumer incomes, international trade agreements and improved technology have led to a surge of fresh fruits and vegetables from many parts of the world in the last twenty years. When the growing season closes for locally grown produce, the door opens for foreign imports. In 2022 the United States received fresh vegetables from 125 different countries.

As I began to inspect labels of origin of produce, and did a little research, I discovered the remarkable number of sources of many of our food products that I took for granted. My biggest surprise was how few fruits are native to the U.S. The short list includes cranberries and persimmons.

The first apples originated in the Tian Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan. The fruits most commonly imported from south of our border include apples, avocados, honeydew melons, mangoes, lemons and nectarines. Lower labor costs and a longer growing season enable us to receive billions of dollars of vegetables from Mexico such as peppers, cucumbers, corn, pinto beans, broccoli, lettuce, celery and squash.

Dole and Del Monte, renowned pineapple producers left Hawaii in the 1980s because it was cheaper to produce pineapples in Central and South America. Today 84% of pineapples come from Costa Rica. Most of our lemons come from Chile, Argentina and Mexico.

Canada provides carrots, cauliflower, greenhouse tomatoes, asparagus, mushrooms and potatoes. Peru also supplies us with potatoes, plus mangoes, organic grapes, ginger and onions.

When I shop at King Soopers, Whole Foods or other groceries linked into the global food chain, I am now aware that the U.S. imports about two-thirds of fresh fruit and one—third of our fresh vegetables in the winter season.

Bilateral international trade agreements have encouraged imports from Peru, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Columbia and other nations.

Recently I called the Kroger (King Soopers and City Market) customer service phone (1-800 632 6900) to discover the origin of several items that had no label of origin. I learned that the Minute Maid orange juice comes from Brazil or Costa Rica, their cottage cheese from Utah, and the cacao in chocolate milk is from the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Ecuador or the Dominican Republic. A separate inquiry revealed that much of our tea comes from India, China and Vietnam. Coffee bean imports are led by Brazil (30%), Columbia (19%) and Honduras (7%), with Kona Hawaii less than 1%.

The home garden-to-table and farm-to-table practices are growing in popularity. These local sources of fresh food tend to be organic. Home gardening gives the summertime gardener pleasures of the very freshest food, perhaps a unique connection to the soil and earth, and an infinitesimally smaller carbon footprint compared to all of our imported edibles — but not at the convenience of the supermarket.

During these chilly winter months when our gardens are asleep, it is a luxury that is often taken for granted that much of our food supply comes from many places around the world. This includes my fig jam from Turkey.

Spense Havlick is a former member of the Boulder City Council and previously served on the Daily Camera Editorial Advisory Board. Havlick@colorado.edu.