GRADING, PACKING, AND 

 MARKETING. 



THE work of the market gardener is by no means finished 

 with the harvesting of the crops he has grown. The 

 motive behind all his operations is to obtain a reasonable 

 return in net profit on the skill, labour, and capital expended. 

 In order to secure such a return his produce must be sold 

 at remunerative prices, and the knowledge of how to go to 

 work to get such prices is quite as important as the ability 

 to raise the crops. 



Some growers happily a decreasing minority still contend 

 that the labour involved in washing, grading, and careful packing 

 does not result in sufficiently enhanced prices to make it worth 

 while, and consistently with their opinion often put their pro- 

 duce on the market in a more or less rough and dirty condition, 

 with no real attempt at grading good, bad, and indifferent being 

 frequently mingled in one consignment. Such methods have 

 no redeeming feature ; some who follow them, by being favour- 

 ably situated in close proximity to the markets, and so being 

 subject to very little expense for carriage, are no doubt able 

 to make fair profits on the whole, but to others without such 

 advantages these methods must prove disastrous in the end. 

 One of the worst features of this " rough and ready" business 

 is that those who follow it are not the only persons to suffer 

 from its bad effects ; if that were so there would be little cause 

 of complaint. But the fact is that when such consignments 

 are placed on the market in appreciable quantities they have 

 the effect of lowering the quotations for the whole of that par- 

 ticular variety of produce, and those who go to the trouble and 

 expense of proper grading and packing, although they may 

 still depend upon getting higher prices, do not get as much as 

 they otherwise would, and so are to some extent penalised for 

 the wrong-doing of others. 



