North America: Squash, pumpkins, blueberries, cranberries
Central America: Tomatoes, chocolate, vanilla, peanuts, chili peppers
South America: Cashews, potatoes, vanilla, corn, chilies, etc.
The Thanksgiving holiday commemorates a specific event — a three-day autumn “entertainment and feast” held somewhere near Plymouth, a more conceptual reminder of mutual regard and common benefit among people of very different backgrounds, and also of western hemisphere food. Some examples of this 402nd observance week:
North America and Thanksgiving: Only two first-hand accounts describe the 1621 “First Thanksgiving,” and both are brief. Edward Winslow, Plymouth Governor several times in the 1630s, notes codfish and bass, plus corn and the five deer Massasoit and his 90 Wampanoag sagamores brought to the event. William Bradford, the first Governor, mentions ducks, turkey, and “meal” as well. Both are silent on cranberries and pumpkin pie, though that doesn’t mean they didn’t have any. Here’s Winslow’s report (via Pilgrim Hall Museum):
“Our harvest being gotten in, our governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours ; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoyt, with some ninetie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine and others. And although it be not always so plentifull, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie.”
And Bradford’s:
“They begane now to gather in ye small harvest they had, and to fitte up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health & strenght, and had all things in good plenty; fFor as some were thus imployed in affairs abroad, others were excersised in fishing, aboute codd, & bass, & other fish, of which yey tooke good store, of which every family had their portion. All ye somer ther was no want. And now begane to come in store of foule, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, &c. Besids, they had about a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corn to yt proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty hear to their freinds in England, which were not fained, but true reports.”
Forty-one decades later, the turkey, cranberries, and pumpkins traditionally served for Thanksgiving remain New England and North American specialties. Crops, fruits, and roots originating further south have often spread more widely. Some illustrative lists, with two glamor products:
Mexico & Central America: The middle swath of the western hemisphere is home to the peanuts used in West African groundnut stew, the tomatoes flavoring Italian pasta sauce, and chocolate, vanilla, and corn. Chile peppers are still more “globalized”: the ancestral ones grew in Mexico (though there’s a case for Brazil too), and their descendants now routinely provide the spike for som tam in Khon Kaen, goulash in Budapest, bean curd in Chongjing, momo (usually in oil) in Lhasa, vindaloo in Goa, berbere in Addis Ababa.
Those looking for more heat this weekend than Bradford, Winslow, and Massasoit had in 1621 can consult the “Scoville Heat Scale” which, named for an early 20th century Massachusetts pharmacist, attempts to organize all the chili pepper varieties by heat content. It runs from zero Scoville Heat Units to two million in the case of artificially amped-up “bear spray equivalent” peppers bred over the last decade. Assuming these — Carolina Reaper, Trinidad Scorpion, etc. — are basically inedible stunts, sample Scoville ratings* from the feeble bell to the mighty habanero look like this:
| Habanero | 150,000 |
| Thai prik kee nu | 75,000 |
| India byadgi | 75,000 |
| Ethiopian berbere | 40,000 |
| Ghanaian kpakpo | 35,000 |
| Peruvian Amarillo | 35,000 |
| Lhasa red pepper | 23,000 |
| Jalapeno | 10,000 |
| New Mexico “Hatch” | 2,000 |
| Paprika | 500 |
| Pepperoncini | 100 |
| Bell Pepper | 0 |
* Using averages rather than the more technically correct range; the generally accepted range for the habanero, for example, is 100,00-350,000 Scoville units.
South America: Cash crops like cashews, staples like cassava and quinoa, and fruits such as avocado and pineapple. A nominee for the “most globalized” South American crop is the potato. Often disrespected with terms like “humble” (BBC) and “lowly” (Smithsonian Magazine), potatoes are the world’s sixth-most-produced crop at 376 million tons a year and root up in at least 150 of the world’s 197 countries. The top seven producers account for two-thirds of annual potato tonnage:
| China | 94 million tons |
| India | 54 million tons |
| Ukraine | 21 million tons |
| United States | 19 million tons |
| Russia | 18 million tons |
| Germany | 11 million tons |
| Bangladesh | 9 million tons |
U.S. producers grow about 100 variants including russets, fingerlings, purple-blues, whites, and so forth. By comparison, farmers in the original Andean potato-cultivation areas manage 4,500. By volume, though, the U.S.’ 19 million tons are about three times the output of the 14th-largest producer Peru’s 5.7 million tons, and 39th-place Bolivia’s 1.2 million tons combined. Having been carried to Europe by Spanish entrepreneurs in the 1500s, the potato returned east across the Atlantic to be served boiled or mashed at Thanksgiving events that, though more complex than the impromptu 1621 event, still mean something similar.
The Pilgrim Hall Museum of Plymouth has two contemporary notes on the first Thanksgiving.
The Mashpee/Taunton Wampanoag Nation.
Native American agriculture today:
Per USDA, about 79,000 native American farmers and ranchers operate 59 million acres of crop and ranch land, producing about $3.5 billion worth of agricultural output annually. The Inter-tribal Agricultural Council, based in Billings Montana, promotes tribal farm and fishery exports.
And USDA’s statistical deep dive into 21st-century Native farm and ranch life, from the 2017 National Census of Agriculture.
And Mitsotam Café at the Museum of the American Indian has menus and material on contemporary Native American farming and products.
Chile peppers:
The National Institute of Standards and Technology explains the Scoville Heat Scale.
And the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University plans its 2024 conference.
Potatoes:
The International Potato Center in Peru.
And Washington’s Potato Commission explains Pacific Northwest potato farming.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
