Angelo Benassi at his home in Gilroy, which is his
father’s prune farm that he purchased in 1939.
Benassi’s stands in front of the barn, and the structure
used as a “home” for the migrant workers. Above,
Benassi in front of a truck bed with a license plate
from 1953 and below, an old dehydrator building.
haul of the growers,” resulting in over
80 dried plum packing plants operating
in the Santa Clara Valley by 1900.
Perino recalled that local growers sold
to plants including “Sunsweet, Valley
View, and Mayfair Packing,” and added,
“Our family sold to Mayfair.”
Angelo Benassi explained that
“Sunsweet Growers was a marketing
cooperative (a cooperative made up of
farmers).”
“Instead of everybody having their own
dryers and processing machinery, you had
it all at one; everybody put money into it,
and they built a Sunsweet facility, and it
was centrally located,” Perino added.
Unfortunately, with the good came the
bad, and by the turn of the century, crop
acreage in California’s valleys had reached
90,000 acres, setting the stage for an
over-supply crisis. Adding to the prune
farmers’ problems was the state of qual-
ity standards, which in the early 1900s
were almost nonexistent, allowing U.S.
and overseas packers to repackage poor
quality fruit with California fruit, and
then sell it as “California grown.”
These types of discrepancies led to
the establishment of the Dried Fruit
Association of California (today’s DFA
of California) in 1908.
The DFA’s effectiveness in overseeing
distribution, legislation, quality improve-
ments and technological innovations,
enabled a successful transition into the
20 th century for the dried plum industry.
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
It thrived for the next several decades,
and by 1941, with the U.S. involvement
in the World War II, sales of the dried
fruit industry reached the highest level
in history.
Lower post-war demand caused a glut
of product for the California dried plum
farmer. This prompted the industry, in
August 1949, to establish volume and
quality control with the adoption of the
Federal Marketing Agreement and Order
for dried plums. It was soon followed by,
the State Marketing Order for California
Dried Plums in January 1952.
The establishment of the two
organizations resulted in the creation
of the California Dried Plum Board
(CDPB), whose mission expanded world-
gmhtoday.com
61