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Of these farmers* associations that have proved their worth by sur- 

 viving, one of the earliest, and I believe one of the most strikingly success- 

 ful, is the Eastern Shore of Virginia Produce Exchange; and since the 

 methods by which it has revolutionized the farming industry of the section 

 it occupies are capable of very general application, with equal benefits, in 

 other communities, a brief account of these methods and of the nature and 

 present scope of the Exchange's activities will, I hope, be of interest to 

 this conference. 



The Exchange claims as its territory the two counties of Virginia lying 

 between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, a thickly settled, in- 

 tensely cultivated peninsula, devoted entirely to truck-farming and mainly 

 to the production of Irish and sweet potatoes, though strawberries, cabbage 

 and onions are also important crops. It now markets the products of some 

 three thousand farmers, comprising about two-thirds of the entire output 

 of the peninsula; and since it is an exasperating incident of this plan 

 of co-operative marketuig that even those who actively oppose the associa- 

 tion will still benefit by whatever improvement in general market condi- 

 tions its work may bring about, the Exchange also stands as the chief 

 bulwark against market disaster for the constantly dwindling proportion 

 of Eastern Shore farmers who, for one reason or another, still refuse it 

 their support — as indeed most of them will freely admit. During this, 

 its fourteenth year, the Exchange has marketed over eight thousand car- 

 oads of Irish, and over four thousand carloads of sweet potatoes, with 

 enough of its other products to make a total of some thirteen thousand 

 carloads, or about two and a half million barrels, of food products. These 

 goods it has sold to a customer list of more than a thousand wholesale 

 produce dealers in about four hundred different cities and towns of forty- 

 one different states and Canadian provinces. And for these goods it has 

 obtained, and paid over to its members, a total of, in round numbers, four 

 and a half million dollars. During the fourteen years covered by its 

 activities, the peninsula's total annual production of farm products has 

 trebled in volume, farm land values have risen from thirty-five or fifty 

 to from one to two hundred dollars an acre, and there has been an ad- 

 vance which baffles estimate in the general prosperity and material stand- 

 ards of living of the people — and all this in one of the first settled parts of 

 the oldest state in the Union, without any fresh influx of population, with- 

 out the development of any new industries or transportation facilities, with- 

 out even any very radical changes in methods of farming, but merely under 

 the gentle stimulus of the nation's generally advancing prosperity and in 

 consequence of the, substitution fourteen years ago of a rational system 

 of marketing in place of the old haphazard plan of consigning to commission 

 merchants or selling at random to speculative buyers. Moreover, 

 although it is impossible to eliminate all risk — although the farmer must 

 look forward to fat years alternating with lean and there must perhaps 

 always occur, as during the last half of the sweet potato season just 



