ipip 



A close study of the crop and acreage 

 figures of the Northwest discloses a 

 condition not generally suspected. 

 Prune men assert with a great deal of 

 optimism that the tonnage will increase 

 many fold in the course of the next 

 few years. Is this really the case? It 

 can be recalled that the danger of over- 

 production has been preached every 

 year for a number of years and yet the 

 figures prove that the crop increase is 

 far from keeping pace with the acreage 

 coming into bearing each year. We 

 thus come back again to the problem of 

 old age, senile deterioration, decrease 

 in production or whatever we are a 

 mind to term it. For want of a better 

 term, the writer has chosen the ex- 

 pression "productive mortality" to in- 

 dicate the condition existing when, 

 without actual death, the productive 

 capacity of the old trees falls off with 

 great rapidity. All observations show 

 that this "productive mortality" is far 

 greater than has been suspected. 



Every industry has its deterioration 

 charge reckoned on a basis of the cost 

 of replacing the wear and tear. Horti- 

 culturally speaking, this would be cal- 

 culated in terms of the acreage neces- 

 sary to be planted each year to make 

 up for the "productive mortality," or to 

 keep the industry up to normal. Con- 

 sidering this matter from a theoretical 

 viewpoint, for instance, suppose we 

 assume that with a given 1,000 acres of 

 prunes a 10 per cent productive mor- 

 tality is recorded. This would mean 

 that a hundred acres planted each year 

 would simply keep up the average pro- 

 duction instead of increasing the total 

 production by another hundred acres 

 each year, which is the way most esti- 

 mators figure. What, then, is the pro- 

 ductive mortality rate of prunes? 



Douglas County had a crop of 

 8,500,000 pounds of dried prunes in 

 1918. During the last eight years a 

 large acreage of trees have come into 

 bearing, adding their crop to the crop 

 of the older trees. The 1918 season 

 was certainly a normal prune season, 

 and this figure does not represent a 

 short year, yet on referring to the yield 

 of 1910 we are somewhat surprised to 

 learn that the crop was 7,500,000 

 pounds. In short, the additional acre- 

 age coming into hearing for the last 

 eight years has made little increase in 

 our total production; this, too, when we 

 know that it is these young tracts that 

 bear the heaviest. 



BETTER FRUIT 



Page 



39 



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