Quick — what’s your answer to this question: “What is the #1 fruit grown in Georgia?”
Or how about this: “What state grows more peaches: South Carolina, New Jersey, or Georgia?”
If you’re like most people — and if you didn’t change your instinctive answer because you thought it was a trick question — you would have answered “Peaches and Georgia.” You would be wrong on both counts — by a lot.
It turns out that blueberries are the number one fruit crop in, um, the Peach State. Last year, blueberries accounted for $350 million of economic activity while their signature fruit was responsible for just under $85 million. California (due in part to its size) is the leader with 500,000+ tons of peach production, while South Carolina and New Jersey are next. South Carolina produced more than twice as many peaches as Georgia and has been ahead of Georgia since 1984.
All this is to say that it’s important to verify information and to question our assumptions. At one point, peaches and Georgia were synonymous, but that was decades ago. Circumstances and outcomes change. Our ability to change our beliefs needs to change as well.
