ORCHARD HEATING 41 



equal to the cost of heating five nights, in which case all would 

 break even, although of course the man who heated had the 

 worry and the chance of losing oil and crop due to accident in 

 heating such as too heavy wind, etc. In all cases the value df 

 the crop on the tree saved must be more than the cost of the 

 heating in order for it to pay to be in the heating business and 

 whether one should be heating or not is not a function of the 

 amount of frost that occurs. All other things being the same, 

 and considering the overhead expense of heating as small in 

 comparison with the fuel and labor cost, if it is wisdom to heat 

 an orchard in the south where frost seldom occurs, it will be 

 wisdom to heat in the north where it occurs frequently. 



It is also interesting to note that whether one should heat 

 or not, i. e., considering only who is making or losing more 

 money, is not a function of the amount olf money invested for P 

 does not occur in the equation Of course if you are heating to 

 save the trees from being killed then an orange tree is worth 

 more than a peach tree and a difference would come in, but we 

 are here simply considering the crop. Heating is more apt to 

 be advisable in California than in other localities because fuel 

 is cheap there and the lemon and oranige crop are more valuable 

 than the average apple crop. 



Curve No. 2, Figure 2, shows that as the selling price of the 

 fruit goes up the number of times that you can heat and yet 

 compete with the fellow who doesn't, increases, and curve No. 3, 

 Figure 2, shows that as the j>rice of oil goes down the number of 

 times that you can heat, goes up and still break even with the 

 man who doesn't and if you actually heat a less number of times 

 than this and yet save the crop then you are ahead of the one 

 who doesn't heat and you should be in the heating business. 

 However, if you are in the heating business because of reason- 

 ing such as the above, you must add this heating cost to the 

 other entire cost of production and if it is now more than what 

 you receive for the fruit then you should go out of the orchard 

 business. If, as was explained earlier, your land values and 

 your other cost of production are low so that you can afford to 

 increase your cost of production by heating and still compete 

 with the frostless locality and if when you spend your money 

 If or heating 1 this cost of heating is less than the value of the fruit 

 that you save, then you can compete with the fellow in your 

 locality who doesn't heat and also compete with the frostless 

 locality and win. 



