258 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



PRESENT AND FUTURE OF APPLE CULTURE IN MICHIGAN. 



BY MR. R. H. SHERWOOD OF WATERVLIET. 



This eventful year of 1896 is drawing to a close, and as it slips into * 

 the past let us give it a fair retrospect as regards the culture of apples, 

 basing our opinions and views upon the experiences of the year. 



Business, generally speaking, has been done only at small margins of 

 profit, no one buying except when necessity demanded the purchase. 

 Strictest economy in all lines has restricted our consumption in all the 

 products of the farm, the result being that farmers as well as all pro- 

 ducers have been living on small margins of profit. 



Ordinarily the farmer believes his lot the hardest, and, when he reviews 

 the .year with its low prices, believes nothing is quite so unprofitable as 

 his business. It is a fact that, when general business is prospering and 

 consequently prices are good, the products of the farm are in increased 

 demand; and we hope farming as an occupation may be added to the 

 industrial wealth of this country more in the future than in the past. 



The fruit interests of this year have had, probably, what will not occur 

 again, in regard to excessively abundant crops, but I believe the real and 

 true cause of the low prices to be underconsumption rather than over- 

 production. This applies more j)articularly to other fruits than to the 

 apple, for we know the average crop for the country of that fruit, as 

 compared to last year, is practically the same. The government report 

 for ]S'ovember gives it as 65.5 of a full crop, and it corresponds to my 

 most reliable source of information, outside the government report, the 

 estimate of the Orange Judd Farmer giving the figure for the year at 

 fifty million barrels as compared with fifty-five million barrels last year. 



Early in the season I received a report from an apple-man to the effect 

 that this year's crop was 216 million barrels, but in conversation with a 

 buyer who was in a position to know, he said to cut the above estimate 

 in two and then cut again, which brings it down to fifty-four million 

 bai'rels. w^hich I believe will be much reduced from that figure. I am no 

 "prophet nor son of a prophet"; but, taking the situation as we find it, 

 viz. : great waste in orchards, poor keeping quality of the apples, and 

 inci'eased prospect for consumpti(m, and a greatly increased foreign 

 demand, it appears to me that the prospect is good for higher prices in 

 the future. A five-cents-per-barrel rate from Buffalo to Chicago by boat 

 has given Michigan severe competition in marketing her crop, which Avill 

 result in much of it being wasted. In driving through the country and 

 seeing the ground covered with handsome fruit, the old adage comes to 

 mind, "wilful waste makes woeful want''; and right here I will give it as 

 my opinion that those orchards where the ai)p]es are left to decay on the 

 gi'cnnd will be infested with moths and millers to an unusual degree 

 another vear. 



