100 





Very Small Small Medium Large All Farms 



D 



Hobby/Retired 

 Partnership 



Corporation 

 One Owner 



Figure 1. Business types among Massachusetts fruit 

 growers responding to a mail survey in 1995. 



wholesale (62%) rather than retail (38%). By farm 

 size category, the majority of production from very 

 small and small farms is sold retail, medium farms 

 sell approximately equal percentages wholesale and 

 retail, while large farms are predominantly whole- 

 sale operations. Not surprisingly, large farms em- 

 ploy the largest number of full-time employees. 



Figure 1 describes the types of business orga- 

 nizational models most often used by Massachusetts 

 fruit growers. Although the survey was intended 

 to be sent only to active commercial fruit growers, 

 11% of very small growers and 3% of small growers 

 described their fruit growing operation as "hobby", 

 or "retired". As one would expect, none of the me- 

 dium or large growers described their business in 

 those ways. Regardless of farm size, the most fre- 

 quent type of business model reported used is "one 

 owner" (52%), followed closely by "partnership" and 

 "corporation", except for large farms, where corpo- 

 rations are most the most common model (39%), fol- 



lowed by one owner and partnerships (32% 

 and 14%, respectively). In addition to the 

 above, a small number of respondents (3 %), 

 described their farm as either a Chapter S 

 Corporation, trust, or a school farm. 



Computer Use 



Another general question asked about 

 respondents use of computer technology on 

 their farms. Somewhat surprisingly, given 

 Massachusetts reputation as a "high-tech" 

 state, almost 47 percent of respondents re- 

 plied that they do not use a personal com- 

 puter on the farm. It is possible that this 

 percentage is even higher, given that 16 per- 

 cent of survey respondents left the ques- 

 tion blank, potentially indicating non-use. 

 Relatively low computer use may indicate 

 a need for Extension training in this area. 

 As noted in other questions, responses 

 varied greatly according to farm size. A 

 total of 61% of large farms reported com- 

 puter use, compared to only 24 % of very 

 small farms. Small and medium farms were inter- 

 mediate in reporting computer use (35% and 46%, 

 respectively). 



Across all sizes of farms, payroll was the most 

 common sort of computer use (21%), followed by pes- 

 ticide record-keeping (17%), and inventory control 

 (14%). In spite of the popularity of the Internet, 

 and other on-line services, only 8% of respondents 

 said that they used a computer for telecommunica- 

 tion, and a still smaller percentage reported using 

 computers for keeping records of IPM monitoring. 

 A single individual replied that s/he used a com- 

 puter for IPM decision support (e.g., expert systems). 

 It remains to be seen if use of computerized IPM 

 decision support and record keeping would increase 

 if suitable software and use training were made 

 available, or if current low reliance on computers 

 for those purposes (as well as for telecommunica- 

 tion) is linked with the current age distribution of 

 Massachusetts apple growers. 



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Fruit Notes, Summer, 1996 



