INTERCROPPING THE YOUNG ORCHARD FROM 

 AN ECONOMIC STANDPOINT 



M. C. BURRITT, ITHACA, X. Y. 



Director New York State Farm Bureaus 



I think most fruit growers will agree 

 with me that the principal reason they are 

 in the business of fruit growing is to get 

 a living that way. I presume many are 

 in the business of fruit growing just 

 because they like it because it is an en- 

 joyable business; but certainly a prime 

 motive is the profits they may gain from 

 this enterprise. 



I presume many older men who have 

 been in this business for a long time, and 

 who may have accumulated a considerable 



amount of profit from it, are not so much interested as some of the 

 younger men men who have apple orchards, inherited from their 

 fathers at a time when the business was profitable. It is not known 

 just how much those orchards cost. Some of us are beginning to 

 find out how much, and we are concluding that it is no small 

 amount of money. Those who have large orchards already, and 

 can simply take the profits out of these older orchards and grow 

 younger orchards with them, do not mind the cost so much ; but 

 the younger men just starting out find themselves up against a very 

 serious problem paying expenses as they go along. 



There is complaint nowadays that we do not have anything to 

 say about fixing the price of the things we sell, and that is more 

 or less true; but we shall not put ourselves in a position to have 

 anything to say if we allow misleading statements as to profits to 

 go out. The average New York Oity man's idea of farming, and 

 of fruit growing particularly, is that it is a short and sure road 

 to wealth. We are primarily to blame for this. What leads him 

 to believe that the fruit grower's profits are so large? Tsually 

 it is the big stories of profits that have been printed. Professor 



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