Saw the following material, and thought some here might find it of
interest.

Regards,
Tom Billings
[log in to unmask]

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>From "Fruit Gardener" magazine, November/December 1997, vol. 29, #6,
>published by California Rare Fruit Growers, Inc., pgs. 17-18.

Column: "Ask The Experts", Coordinated by Eunice Messner

Q: I am in desperate need of information about the production and
commercial value of carob in the U.S.
- Mirella Menglide, Italian Trade Commission, New York, N.Y.

A: In the early 1920s Dr. Aaronson from Israel came to California and
presented a series of talks on carob that aroused much enthusiasm.
Some large plantings went in at that time but the boom became a bust
when there was no one to buy the pods. In 1949 Dr. J. Eliot Coit
wrote a long article on carob published in Economic Botany which
resulted in the planting of 100 or more acres north of Ensenada,
Baja California [Mexico]. This planting still exists today and is the
only source of carob pods in North America. There was also a small
planting in Southern California but it was found that the Island of
Cyprus could put carob pods at the dock in San Pedro, Calif., for
less than it would cost the California grower to grow them. So these
plantings were abandoned. The extensive collection of some 72 varieties
collected from all the carob-growing parts of the world is no longer
in existence. In fact, there is no production in the U.S. today,
commercial or otherwise.

... snipped...

Racho El Mogor of Ensenada, Mexico, mentioned above, is the only place in
the Northern Hemisphere [I think he means North America] growing carob,
and thus the sole source of carob.

- Paul Thomson, CRFG Carob Specialist

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Note: carob is a common street tree in California.