The majority of the world's pineapples are grown in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Costa Rica, which consistently rank as the top three producers. It’s hard to imagine today but Florida was filled with pineapple plantations in the late 1800’s. Long before citrus, pineapples were being cultivated. Crates of the fruit were shipped by boats from the Florida Keys and Merritt Island on the east coast of Florida to cities in the northeast. They were nicknamed “pines,” because they resembled a pine cone.
Florida Keys pineapples - In the rocky Florida Keys pineapple cultivation started in the 1860s. Benjamin Baker, known as “King of Wreckers” for his engagement in the business of salvaging ships, grew pineapples on Plantation Key, typically shipping them by schooner to New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
In the late 1850s, Baker and his sons sailed for the Upper Keys where they cleared land on Plantation Key and Key Largo. When the fields were ready, Baker left for Havana and purchased as many as 6,000 pineapple slips and suckers to plant on his lands. A firsthand account of Baker’s pineapple operation, written by Dr. J.B. Holder, appeared in an 1871 edition of Harper’s Weekly: “Plantation Key has considerable good soil; many of the trees here are seventy or eighty feet in height. Here was a large plantation of cocoa-nut palms, several hundred in number, and a patch of young pineapples.
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