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Abstract
This dissertation examines the citrus industries of Florida (United States) and São Paulo (Brazil) between 1960 and 1995, during which these two states emerged as the world’s dominant producers of oranges and frozen concentrated orange juice. It argues that transformations of labor arrangements, political economies, and landscapes in each state were rooted in the competition between their respective citrus industries. Specifically, it explores how growers and processors attempted to remain competitive by controlling the labor costs, market access, and natural environment on which their businesses depended. In attempting to control labor costs, growers and processors found themselves at odds with farmworkers and farmworker unions in the groves and in the courts, and, in Florida’s case, oversaw a demographic transformation of their labor force from Black and white Southerners to a predominately immigrant labor force from Mexico and Central America. In attempting to control markets, including market access or in disputes over excess supply, growers and processors shaped the economies of some of the largest sectors of each state. And in attempting to control nature, such as growing conditions and the prevention of pests and diseases, growers actively reshaped the ecologies of their state. Using methods from labor, business, and environmental history, the dissertation takes seriously the concerns of the industry as expressed in meeting minutes and trade journals while exploring how efforts to compete and control costs often had unintended consequences or provoked organizing and resistance.