Editing Peach (section)

=== United States ===
[[File:Peaches in baskets.jpg|right|thumb|180px|Peaches at a roadside stand in South Carolina]]

Despite it not being first or even second in peach production and the peach contributing far less than 1% of the state's agricultural production, the peach is strongly associated in American culture with the state of Georgia.{{sfn|Okie|2016|pp=2–4}} However, the peach did not officially become the [[List of U.S. state foods|official fruit]] of [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] until 1995.{{sfn|Georgia Secretary of State 2018}} It has been proceeded by South Carolina, which named the peach its state fruit in 1984.{{sfn|Aylesworth|Aylesworth|1996|p=51}} They were joined in giving the peach an official state status by Delaware naming it the [[List of U.S. state and territory flowers|state flower]] in 1995 and designating peach pie as its official dessert in 2009.{{sfn|GIC|2018}} Alabama also named it the state tree fruit in 2006 in addition to the blackberry designated as the state fruit in 2004.{{sfn|ADAH 2014a}}{{sfn|ADAH 2014b}}

The peach was marketed by the Georgia Fruit Exchange and later the Georgia Peach Grower's Association as being particularly tasty and special from the 1910s to the 1960s.{{sfn|Okie|2016|pp=124–130}} This also coincided with parts of Georgia wanting to distance itself from being, "the home of slavery and lynching and Confederate memorials," in the words of [[Frank Smith Horne]].{{sfn|Okie|2016|p=168}} The local movement to create a new county centred on [[Fort Valley, Georgia|Fort Valley]] to be named [[Peach County, Georgia|Peach County]] sponsored Peach Blossom Festivals from 1922 to 1926. They promoted a vision of a new progressive south that also ignored the black labor upon which the peach harvest, like that of cotton, depended.{{sfn|Okie|2016|pp=147, 152, 159}} Though the acreage of has declined to just one twelfth of its 1925 peak,{{sfn|Okie|2016|p=220}} from 1935, Georgia has been nicknamed the "Peach State".{{sfn|OED 2025d}}
{{Clear}}