As a citizen of the host city for Super Bowl 2013, I find the scale of this thing fascinating. In some ways, this event surpasses the festivities of Thanksgiving among some demographics. And of course, the two days are both about food and football and screaming (okay maybe that’s only some families)…
This article talks about the history of guacamole at Super Bowl festivities and how it is tied to the explosion of avocados grown and marketed in California starting in the 1980s according to the author:
In the 1980s, California saw a boom in avocado farm start-ups — a small-scale “green gold” rush, news outlets joked; easy avocado trees were the perfect crop for the gentleman farmer. More avocado farms meant a greater — and cheaper — avocado supply for the end user. This bounty, combined with the establishment of commissions to promote avocados and protect grower interests, triggered the classic feedback loop that mainstreams “exotic” food into American culture: The more visible and widely distributed a food becomes, the less strange it seems; the less strange it seems, the more widespread it becomes. You can see this cultural shift in a couple of banner years between the middle and end of the last century: A mid-summer bumper crop in 1960, two years before Jackie Kennedy served an avocado and crabmeat salad at a formal state dinner, cause the price per avocado to drop to 15 to 30 cents — roughly equivalent to $1.17 to $2.33 today, which we’d consider a bit high for a record low. In 1987, when Californians had been slicing avocado onto every burger and sandwich for about a decade, a similar surplus crop allowed New Yorkers to buy at 30 to 50 cents apiece (60 cents to $1 today).
So fascinating to think that for the next Super Bowl in New Orleans the state ag folks could start planning for a bumper crop of pecans and work to add roasted pecans, pecan pie to become the next tradition for Super Bowl Sunday.
Helping Public Markets Grow 