IQiS 



BETTER FRUIT 



Page 7 



What U. S. Bureau of Markets Does for Fruitgrowers 



THE activities of the Bureau of Mar- 

 kets are very varied and reach 

 practically every producer and 

 consumer in the country and embrace 

 all branches of commerce in foodstuffs 

 and wearing apparel grown or mar- 

 keted in the United States. With that 

 in mind, I shall try to discuss those 

 features of the work which interest 

 primarily horticulturists, and especially 

 the horticulturits of the Northwest. 

 With the Bureau's activities so broad, 

 it is proper and necessary to under- 

 stand the part of its work that I repre- 

 sent. I am engaged primarily in the 

 distribution of information on the 

 quantities of produce marketed and the 

 values of the same as they go through 

 the various commercial channels from 

 the growers to the consumer. In this 

 article it will be necessary for me to 

 take up some of the more scientific 

 branches of the service, with some of 

 which I am fully conversant and of 

 others I know only of the Bureau's 

 work. The activities of the Bureau that 

 touch fruit growers most closely are its 

 work in the preservation of fruits and 

 vegetables in transit and storage, the 

 operations of the Federal Food Inspec- 

 tion Law, and the market news service 

 with which I am connected. 



The efforts of the Bureau for the 

 preservation of foodstuffs from the time 

 they are harvested until ready for con- 

 sumption are of primary importance in 

 this work. Many of the results of its 

 experiments have become fundamental 

 in the building of equipment and the 

 practice of the trade. Of especial worth 

 is its prolonged investigation in the 

 refrigeration service given by the rail- 

 roads, which has resulted in the pro- 

 duction of a standardized refrigerator 

 car, whose principle of construction 

 has been accepted by the car manufac- 

 turers of the country and declared to 

 be fundamental in all food cars they 

 will make. The main features of this 

 new car are more insulation, the build- 

 ing of racks or false floors, and newly- 

 designed ice bunkers which facilitate 

 ventilation and increase the efTiciency 

 of refrigeration. The old-style cars 

 have ice bunkers built to the floor and 

 refrigeration is by radiation, which, 

 sometimes nearly freezes the product 

 at the bunkers and may allow it to spoil 

 in the middle of the car. The new cars, 

 of which between 5,000 and 6,000 will 

 be available for use this year, have 

 ventilation from the bunkers both at 

 the floor and the roof, so that the cold 

 air is drawn from the ice along the 

 floor, passes up through the load and, 

 as it warms up, moves along the roof 

 into the bunker and passes down over 

 the ice, where it is cooled again. That 

 keeps nearly an even temperature 

 throughout the car, and in experiments 

 it has been found to be actually a shade 

 warmer next to the bunker at the roof 

 than in the middle of the car. By this 

 proper ventilation and circulation, it is 

 possible to use salt rapidly to reduce 

 the temperature when cars are first 



By R. L. Ringer, Bureau of Markets U. S. Department of Agriculture 



loaded and, on experiments conducted from the growers. First is the loading 

 from California to New York, produce to prevent breakage. Bailroad cars are 

 has arrived in better condition with the handled roughly, and no ordinary nail- 



consumption of 12,000 pounds of ice 

 than in similar shipments in the old 

 cars which consumed 20,000 pounds of 

 ice. That saving in ice and improve- 

 ment of condition of the fruit mean 

 more money all along the line. 



A next need of the industry is a 

 proper heating car, and the Bureau is 

 now carrying on extensive experiments, 

 costing many thousand dollars, at Rose- 

 ville, California, developing a heating 

 system that can be applied to any re- 

 frigerator car, so that the time is not 

 far distant when shipments of perish- 

 able products will be offered the ideal 

 service of ice in the cars to preserve 

 them in the warm part of the journey, 

 which may terminate in a cold section, 

 with heat to protect them, or vice versa. 



Extensive experiments are also car- 

 ried on in the methods of loading, be- 

 cause ignorance of the best methods 

 have in times past taken an annual toll 

 of hundreds of thousands of dollars 



ing and bracing will hold the packages 

 in place on a long journey, and they 

 frequently arrive smashed or buckled 

 and their valuable contents strewn 

 about the car. Just recently I saw a 

 car that had been on a short journey 

 from Wenatchee to Portland in which 

 75 crates were destroyed and 150 others 

 badly damaged. It is necessary to load 

 properly for ventilation also. Hun- 

 dreds of cars are annually loaded with 

 capacity loads, stuff of all temperatures, 

 jammed in together, without any ven- 

 tilation, and arrive in market unfit for 

 consumption. Aside from that, it is 

 necessary to load to get proper benefit 

 of the refrigerating service which you 

 are paying for. If your load is so piled 

 up that the cool air you are buying 

 reaches only a small part of it, you are 

 making a poor investment. This Bu- 

 reau has investigated all of those 

 phases of loading, and has issued in- 

 Continued on page 19 



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