Handling, Distributing, and Sale of Fruit 231 



The opponents of the cooperative plan of fruit-handling 

 understand these difficulties and utilize them to create 

 dissension among the members of an organization. They 

 are practical difficulties that should be recognized in the 

 formation of associations. Unless these fundamental 

 conditions are carefully guarded, the pooling system may 

 lower the average grade of the fruit of a community, because 

 the grower, realizing that the identity of his fruit is lost in 

 a pool, lets down on the fundamental cultural operations 

 that produce the highest grades of fruit, and trusts to the 

 better fruit of his more skillful neighbors to raise the 

 average net return for the grades in which his fruit is 

 pooled. 



Cooperative Cold-Storage Plants 



A cooperative association may erect a cold-storage 

 plant at the central packing-house, or may build it in- 

 dependently as an adjunct to its fruit-handling and mar- 

 keting operations. This plant may be used to pre-cool 

 the quick-ripening fruits before shipment. It may be 

 used as a centralizing point in which to accumulate large 

 quantities of fruit in order that it may be marketed to 

 better advantage, to equalize the distribution of the prod- 

 uct over a longer period of time, or to hold the fruit 

 until the surplus is exhausted, with a view to securing 

 higher prices. Such plants have already been erected 

 by associations of orange-growers in California and by 

 apple-growers in the Northwest and in the Eastern states. 

 Following the investigations by the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, cold-storage plants have been built 

 in California in connection with association packing- 



