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THE KENT COMMERCIAL FRUIT SHOW. 



The Kent Commercial Fruit Show is a serious attempt to 

 standardise and improve the packing and marketing of British 

 grown fruit. The Show, which was first liekl at Ashford, 

 Kent, in 1911, is managed by a committee of twenty-seven 

 commercial fruit-growers, whose names are evidence of the 

 business character of the undertaking ; the chairman is the 

 Principal of Wye College, and one of the college horticultural 

 staff acted as a most successful secretary. The classes, number- 

 ing seventeen, ai'e open in some cases to the whole of the British 

 Isles and in others to only Kentish growers, and comprise 

 exhibits of apples packed in the Fruit Growers' Federation 

 standard boxes, of new varieties of apples, of bottled fruit, and 

 of fruit trees. At Ashford the number of exhibits was 230, 

 including boxes, whilst at Maidstone the exhibits totalled 227, 

 including 1,147 boxes (about 20 tons of fruit). The Show will 

 be held next year at a centre where considerably more accommo- 

 dation will be required, as it is proposed to include in the 

 schedule classes for cooking apples in barrels, a package which 

 is more suitable for such varieties than the box. The intention 

 of the promoters of the Show is not to advocate boxing of 

 apples for all varieties, but to emphasise the importance of 

 marketing British apples under conditions as favourable as 

 Colonial and Foreign fruit. Hitherto, British apples have been 

 sold in bushels or half-sieves in a more or less higgledy- 

 piggledy condition as to grading, and the salesman is some- 

 what inclined to advocate the continuance of this system (?), 

 and the opponents of the boxing system, who are rapidly 

 being reduced in number, claim that the box is not a suitable 

 package for British fruit on the score of the cost of the box, 

 the labour of packing, and the hesitation of buyers to accept 

 such a package ; others urge that the size of the box is unsuit- 

 able, the "bulge" is unnecessary, the fruit is seriously damaged 

 by the rough methods of railway servants in handling the 

 boxes, but some of these objections are details which can 

 be adjusted as the method becomes more generally adopted. 

 It is a somewhat trite saying that what this generation 

 ridicules, the next generation accepts and the third generation 

 considers indispensable, and any innovation is siibject to such 

 treatment. It is a fact, however, that the quality of British fruit 

 is not properly appreciated by the " man in the street " who 

 is accustomed to the orderly and tempting packages of Colonial 

 fruit ; but once the English consumer " gets his teeth " into ai; 



