Pageu - BETTER FRUIT 



Slipshod Practices in Marketing Fruit 



By \\ . B. Armstrong 



President Washington Slate Farm Bureau, Yakima, Washington 



December, 1921 



FULLY to describe the lack of order in 

 the distribution of the perishable food 

 stuffs grown in this country would be im- 

 possible and to attempt such full descrip- 

 tion would result in a tiresome impeach- 

 ment of our civilization which has per- 

 mitted the greatest disorder to remain in 

 the distribution of the food of the people. 

 A few statements will illustrate the dis- 

 order, and while they are drawn from ex- 

 perience with apples, please remember that 

 exactly similar happenings occur to all raw 

 food stuffs, whether they be apples or 

 onions, turnips, squash or potatoes, poultry 

 or eggs. 



The national apple crop of 1920 will be 

 remembered as the largest for almost 20 

 years, and as our Northwest crop moved to 

 market we found that a number of centers 

 of distribution were becoming bady glutted. 

 By the first of this year losses, due to 

 lack of what I will call pre-vision in ship- 

 ping, must have aggregated fully $1,000,- 

 000 to growers and shippers of Washington 

 alone. 



The storage facilities of Fort Worth, 

 Texas, were piled up with excess shipments 

 of Northwest Jonathan apples, while, to 

 my knowledge, there were still unfilled or- 

 ders for that variety in the hands of ship- 

 pers. 



It is impossible, of course, to trace back 

 the ultimate loss, but when it is under- 

 stood that 95 cars of Jonathans were in 

 storage in Fort Worth late in December, it 

 will be realized that tremendous loss was 

 experienced from that point alone. The 

 presence of so many Jonathans there closed 

 the market? of that region to later varieties, 

 causing further loss — indirect loss, of 

 course, but nevertheless very important. 



Kansas City w^as another center where 

 the glut exceeded that at Fort Worth, and 

 conditions at Pittsburg, Chicago and other 

 places only repeated with little variation, 

 the same tale. 



My own observation and that of many 

 others show that in the middle and eastern 

 states in the spring of this year apples were 

 being retailed at exorbitant prices and it is 

 undoubtedly true that nearly all of our 

 apples of that 1920 crop were consumed at 

 tremendous prices. Some said "over-pro- 

 duction" caused the disasters to our 1920 

 crop. I assert that, in view of the facts I 

 have related, such description is unwar- 

 ranted, and to make my position stronger, if 

 need be, will say that I have knowledge 

 of large areas of Illinois, Iowa and other 

 middle states, which were almost entirely 

 without a supply of either eastern or west- 

 ern apples. 



The easy-going minds that said "over- 

 production" last spring, looked forward to 

 a certainty of better distribution with the 

 present crop which is the smallest the coun- 



\x\ has had in \ears. What do we see but 

 the same disorder — shipments made with- 

 out any knowledge of the conditions of de- 

 mand and supply at their destinations, cars 

 arriving in large numbers at centers of dis- 

 tribution already flooded, and retail prices 

 kept skv high and proving a barrier against 

 consumption. 



"VT'OLT well know that a very short run of 

 -*- such disorderly marketing would mean 

 the swift ruin, of any manufacturing con- 



cern. A parallel to such unbusinesslike 

 practices cannot be found in any other in- 

 dustry because in all other industries those 

 whose money and time are tied in them 

 feel a responsibility for the successful mer- 

 chandising of their product. Indeed the 

 industries of which I speak are built right 

 around a selling plan. 



Suppose you were in the commission 

 business in Pittsburg and that you had put 

 vour monev or your credit into a purchase 

 of five cars of Jonathans only to learn 

 soon after that a large number of cars 

 loaded with the same apples were rolling 

 toward you unsold. Suppose that each 

 morning a bright and breezy broker called 

 with a list of unsold cars, any or all of 



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