Report of Missouii Farmers' Week. 541 



a class of buyers quite inaccessible to the eastern pack. This 

 hypothesis was not well founded. In, the spring of 1913 it is 

 found that fancy western fruit is being sold to a lower class trade 

 in direct competition to eastern barrel pack. Their higher class 

 market has been flooded and the overflow into the lower class 

 market has brought down the price to that of eastern grown fruit. 

 This has helped to demoralize the market for Missouri grown 

 storage fruit, and has so reacted on western growers as to char- 

 acterize their position in the market as a disastrous failure. 



It would appear from the foregoing facts that production has 

 exceeded the demand. This is not the case. Smaller cities and 

 towns, upon, whose supply the small apple buyer at picking time is 

 largely dependent, have, except in few instances, not been glutted 

 with apples, and the great farming population beyond the northern 

 and southern limits of the habitat of the apple has not been sup- 

 plied with one-half its maximum capacity for apples. These people 

 are, in turn, dependent on the small town for their supply of fruit. 

 The problem of placing the buyer, representing the small town 

 market, iA touch with the grower has been partially solved by the 

 State Board of Horticulture, acting as a central agent in the dis- 

 tribution of information obtained by writing to grower and buyer, 

 and preparing a list from the information thus obtained. These 

 lists are prepared in, this way : The growers whose names are on 

 file in the office of the board are written to in August requesting 

 their report of the size and quality of their crop, and are asked to 

 name all their neighbors who could be induced to send the same 

 information. A list is prepared when all of these reports are in, 

 and buyers when writing to the board are referred to them as 

 growers in the market with fruit to sell. The list of buyers is 

 compiled in a smilar manner, and their names furnished the growers 

 upon application. This service in 1912 placed growers in touch 

 with more than 300 buyers, and resulted in satisfactory sales in 

 nearly every instance. If the best interests of the fruit growers 

 of Missouri in the matter of marketing their fruit is served by 

 the State Board of Horticulture, it is imperative that this service 

 be extended so as to be accessible to all growers of the State and 

 to all buyers. In order that such service be established, a census 

 must be obtained that will place in, the hands of the State Board 

 of Horticulture a complete list of orchards and data showing their 

 conditions and the varieties of trees. When the effort was made to 

 obtain, the census by mail, it was found that (quoting from annual 



