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 raisin-shaped clay nation men who became famous for singing,

Don't you know that I heard it through the grapevine?

And those

commercial commercials boosted sales for Sun Diamond Growers.

Those commercials boosted sales for Sun Diamond Growers.

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

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

Just one of the groups members Sunmade is the biggest raisins. Just one of the group's members Sunmade 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...

Just in case we ran out of raisins? Exactly. Okay. Would never want to run out of those.

Geez what would happen? Okay. In the 1990s Sun Diamond was worried about changes to two

government policies that it benefited from. One involved federal

reimbursements for overseas marketing campaigns by groups that Sun Diamond

belong to, like the California Prune Board and the Raison Administrative Committee.

...