DUTCH MARKET GARDEXIXG ANU ITS ORGANIZATION 



been able to save their industry not only from bankruptcy but also from 

 subjection to the State. 



Rarely has such strong co-operation developed in so short a time. The 

 market-gardeners came to understand the usefulness of association only 

 after 1880. Towards the middle of the nineteenth centiiry their trade was 

 still so despised that no one in a good position would allow his son to study 

 and practise horticulture. The market gardeners — it is Mr. Marrewijk who 

 thus describes the position of his colleagues in the village of Loosduinen 

 thirty years ago — lived in discoloured and dilapidated cottages and depend- 

 ed exclusively on the local market at the Hague, where in the mornings 

 the}' sent their wives and children to hawk a small quantity of vegetables 

 from house to house, to haggle over prices with the servants or housewives 

 who often delayed their purchases until the afternoon in order to buy more 

 cheaply what remained of this merchandise, so subject to deterioration that 

 it could not be carried away. Competition among producers was very se- 

 vere and would have ruined them all if the nascent export trade in potatoes, 

 especially with Great Britain, had not brought them in a little money and 

 caused the price of vegetables, which were rendered a little less plentiful, 

 to rise. Although the British soon began to grow their owti potatoes the 

 relations which had been established were not broken : the inhabitants of 

 Ivoosduinen began to grow green cucumbers for their customers overseas, 

 and Germany took its place beside Great Britain as a good purchaser of 

 produce. The position was not however satisfactory because competition 

 was unmodified, and the market-gardeners were their own enemies unjtil 

 they recognized that only organization could save them. 



This much developed organization ~ in 1913 there were in Holland 294 

 associations of horticulturists of which 109 belonged to a " central council '' 

 the " Xederlandsche Tuinbouwraad " — has not only important means of 

 propaganda — State-aided schools, frequent exhibitions, a considerable 

 number of periodicals — but also a particular institution, the sales. 



The " sales " brought about a revolution first in the vegetable and then 

 in the fruit trade, for the}' were enormously favourable to the develop 

 ment and specialization of cultivation. The first sales association was found- 

 ed at Broek op Langendi jk, a centre for cabbage growing in North Holland- 

 but until 1897 there were only fifteen of these modern institutions although; 

 now their number far surpasses a hundred. All the important producing 

 districts now have one or more of these "rales". Instead of awaiting pa- 

 tiently the visit of a wholesale buyer and selling him produce at a price fixed 

 rather by the buyer than the producer, or transporting produce by boat 

 or cart to the town and spending the best hours of the day in bargaining 

 with customers, a market gardener who is the associate of a " sale " causes 

 his goods to be carried to a central point where numerous wholesale buyers 

 bid for them at the highest prices. The grower is almost certain of secur- 

 ing the maximum price without leaving his garden. 



The frauds which used to be very frequent and injurious to the repu- 

 tation of Dutch produce on foreign markets are energetically combatted by 



