ADVANTAGES IN FRUIT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION. 38/ 



ADVANTAGES TO GROWER AND DEALER IN A FRUIT 

 GROWERS' ASSOCIATION. 



G. H. BOOTH, LAKE CITY, 



Manager of Excelsior Fruit Growers' Association. 



As this is a Minnesota soicety, the writer will confine himself 

 to Minnesota fruit associations. And as these latter days are 

 days of combination and united effort, it will not be necessary to 

 give any arguments to show that a fruit growers' association is 

 a benefit to its members. Each new association, as it springs 

 into existence, is sufficient evidence of this. The purpose of this 

 paper, therefore, will be to enumerate some of these advantages. 



Since the dealer depends upon the producer, we shall take up 

 first reasons why fruit growers band themselves together to mar- 

 ket their produce as a whole through one management, i We can 

 lay down this principle at the beginning, namely : that the prime 

 object of such associations is to eliminate competition rather than 

 to control the product. To make this plain let us suppose that 

 on some bright morning in the midst of the Minnesota strawberry 

 season, one hundred of the members of a certain association decide 

 that on that day they will market their own berries, as individuals 

 and cut loose from the association. The result will be that each 

 consumer in that vicinity will be so often solicited to buy that he 

 will decide not to buy at all unless he can name his own purchase 

 price, and this will be so small that the growers will soon begin 

 to talk about plowing up their strawberry beds and sowing them 

 to timothy seed. Thus we see that the effect of an association 

 is not to limit the amount of the product but to eliminate com- 

 petition. In truth, a well managed association will so enlarge 

 the range of its markets that the amount of fruit produced each 

 year will steadily increase, until each member has reached the 

 maximum acreage at his command. 



Another reason why fruit growers form associations is to 

 save time. One person might easily spend a half day in selling 

 a hundred pints of raspberries and still not realize mucli more 

 for them than he would have done tlirough the at^sociation ; while 

 this half day of time if spent in cultivating or overseeing tlie 

 raising of more berries might have yielded another hundred pints. 



Fruit associations have still another advantage and that is, 

 the saving of trouble and worry to their members. The ease with 

 which members can dispose of large quantities of proauce through- 



