THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 123 



In general, the nearer to a city or town the fruit farm is located, the more easily the labor 

 problem is solved. This advantage may help to offset higher valuation of land. Human 

 labor is the most expensive item that enters into the cost of producing a bushel of fruit. 

 The effort should be made to reduce the amount of hand labor that is needed by using 

 improved machinery and tools. 



FRUIT ZONES. 



Besides these three primary factors in the cost of producing fruit — land, capital goods, 

 and labor — several other points bear a very important relation to the problem. The 

 adaptability of the fruit or variety to the location, the site and the soil in which it is 

 grown may have more influence than all the other points that have been mentioned. Fruit 

 growing is bound to become more and more segregated, for increasing competition will 

 make it impracticable to grow a staple fruit except in the locality on the soil where 

 it thrives best, and so can be grown cheapest. The demands of a near-by market, how- 

 ever, will offset this to some extent; and market conditions, cost of land and other factors 

 may sometimes make it expedient to grow a fruit outside its most congenial clime. 



What is true of fruits as a whole, is also true of varieties. Certain varieties thrive 

 best in certain localities or on certain soils. It costs less to raise a bushel of fruit if the 

 variety is happy in its environment than if it is not. This one point may have more 

 to do with the cost of production than all others. The man who tries to raise Baldwins 

 in a locality where a tree as hardy as Wealthy is needed, is sure to fail; the man who tries 

 to raise Warfield strawberries on heavy land, better adapted for Parker Earle, must ex- 

 pect the cost of producing his berries to be a little more than if he had fitted the variety 

 to the soil more skillfully. The varieties that succeed best can usually be grown the 

 cheapest, and usually, but not always, they will pay the best. 



The expense of fighting insects and diseases is a large item in the cost of producing 

 fruit, and this expense varies widely in different sections. There are irrigated valleys 

 in the west where it costs 40 cents per year a tree to protect apples from codling moth, 

 and there are other areas where apples can be protected from the same pest for 10 cents 

 per tree. Likewise, it costs 15 cents per year to protect a peach tree from San Jose scale 

 in some sections and nothing in others. Fire blight may ruin half the pear trees in one 

 locality; another locality may be exempt. So one of the important points for a prospect- 

 ive fruit grower to look after is the probable cost of fighting pests and diseases, and the 

 probably unavoidable loss because of them. He may find that one locality offers great 

 advantages over another in this respect. This point is of large and growing importance 

 in estimating the cost of producing fruit. 



SINGLE CROP OR DIVERSIFIED FARMING. 



The cost of producing fruit will be influenced to a large extent by the kind of farming, 

 whether only fruit is grown or mainly fruit with other crops or stock as a side issue. 

 Seventy-five years ago, when most of the population lived in the country, the aim of the 

 farmer was to produce the articles that were necessary to supply the needs of the family. 

 He produced small amounts of all the crops that would grow at all on his farm. Now 

 the farmer grows crops for market, not for his household. The groMh of cities and in- 

 creasing competition have made it necessary for the majority of fanners to specialize 

 along some line and to grow only the crops or raise the stock that succeed best on their 

 farms, and to purchase those necessities that they can buy cheaper than they can raise 

 them. Agriculture is becoming more and more specialized. 



The business of fruit growing is one of the most specialized lines of agriculture. It 

 is usually conducted on small farms under intensive culture, and but a few kinds of fruit 

 plants are grown. Many fruit growers have no other business. There are economic 

 advantages in this arrangement, but there are also great disadvantages. In many cases 

 fruit could be produced cheaper if a certain amount of other crops were grown, or some 

 stock kept. It is all right for the manufacturer to produce but one article, for he can 

 work on it all the year. The crop of the fruit grower, however, occupies his attention 

 but part of the year. There is much loss in unused capital, labor, teams, tools and other 

 capital goods during the remainder of the year. 



I believe that there is a tendency to specialize too highly in fruit growing, and that in 

 many cases it would be more profitable to the fruit specialist to grow a certain amount 

 of other crops, or keep a certain amount of live stock. He should, of course, make fruit 

 growing his main business, and select such other interests as will most effectively fill in 

 the gaps that appear in all kinds of specialized farming. Even though the crops he se- 

 lects may not be nearly as profitable in themselves as fruit, yet the total profit from the 

 farm for a series of years may be greater, since machines, labor and capital goods are 

 kept in use. In short, the fruit grower should endeavor to have supplementary work 



