Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/86

 content, show remarkable food values and even suggest the possibility of rivalry to cane sugar and beet sugar.

Human foods from carobs must stand at present on the list of perfectly good possibilities. Meanwhile there is an open door for their use as a stock food. Carob stock food has the outstanding and perfectly established qualities.

The carob tree is demonstrating itself in California in a manner much like that by which so many other Mediterranean crop plants have come to the front. Early plantings in the first few decades of American occupation resulted in fruiting trees by 1885. As a result the California State Horticulturist reported in 1890, "No tree distributed by the stations is more likely to make a popular shade or ornamental tree for dry rocky situations."

In 1912 Dr. Aaron Aaronson visited California and reported that individual carob trees in Palestine produced three to five hundred pounds, and five tons to an acre might be produced."