SEASONAL MARKETING 21 



intensive methods of older countries; and that more capital is 

 needed for the best results. He believes that it is relatively safe 

 to invest capital freely upon the farm for the sake of correcting 

 abnormal conditions and raising the yield to the normal, but that 

 beyond that point, because of the law of diminishing returns, it 

 will pay only when prices rise." 



The anarchy of agriculture evidenced by frequent overproduc- 

 tion is made clear by an address of C. J. Brand, of the Bureau of 

 Markets of the United States Department of Agriculture. 4 The 

 cantaloupe trade was cited by Mr. Brand to show an overdevelop- 

 ment of the industry due to ignorance as to the development of com- 

 petitive areas, which in 1914 resulted in disaster to the producers 

 and to the large distributors. Yet the consumers failed to buy at 

 any lower prices. "As usual," says the Record, "the slump in 

 prices was not reflected in the retail trade, consumers paying prac- 

 tically as much as in a year of scarcity, while the surplus went to 

 the dump." The conclusion is that "until we have a better adjust- 

 ment of production to market requirements, this problem will 

 continue to be with us." Carl Vrooman, Assistant Secretary of 

 Agriculture, discussing farm problems before the 1914 Philadelphia 

 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, corrected some of the false popular impressions as to the 

 advantages of high acre yields. He showed by statistics that the 

 largest crops do not necessarily mean the largest net income to 

 the farmer, and that in years of relatively small production he 

 often realizes quite as much from his crops as in years of maxi- 

 mum yield. 



Seasonal Marketing. Another point of great significance to 

 the farmer must be noted, and that is the seasonal nature of his 

 product. His chief crops are produced once a year. Yet the crop 

 is consumed every day in the year. Since the crop is produced 

 and harvested during a short period, and consumed during the 

 whole year, there is thereby created the problem of storing, pre- 

 serving, and financing the agricultural product. What, if anything, 

 shall the farmers themselves do about it? That the situation 

 to-day is one of anarchy was strikingly illustrated by one speaker 

 at the 1915 Chicago meeting of the National Conference on Mar- 

 keting and Farm Credits. R. W. Hockaday, of St. Louis, the 

 General Industrial and Agricultural Agent of the M. K. and T. 

 Ry. Co., in discussing the marketing of the Southern peach crop, 



Experiment Station Record, Feb., 1915, p. 106. 



