Raisins are big business in California.

If you were watching TV in the late 1980s, you'll remember the California raisins.

Those were the little raisins-shaped claymation men who became famous for singing.

And those singing raisins were developed by the California Raisin Advisory Board.

Those commercials boosted sales for sun, diamond growers.

This is a group of agricultural cooperatives that pull their resources for things like marketing.

They represent the growers of products like prunes, walnuts, and raisins.

Just one of the group's members, sun-made, is the biggest raisin and dried fruit producer

in the country, and in the world, actually.

You know, the maker of those little red raisin boxes with the girl in the bonnet on the

cover.

Pretty much the entire American raisin industry is located within a few hundred square miles

in California's Central Valley, about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Raisins alone are a serious $500 million industry.

Just until a few years ago, we even had a national raisin reserve.

In the 1990s, sun...

Like just in case we ran out of raisins?

Exactly.

Okay.

We would never want to run out of raisins.

No, geez, what would happen?

Okay.

...