84 FARM MANAGEMENT 



Add to these uncertainties the fact that the weather has 

 nearly as much to do with the total crop as the acreage, 

 and it is no wonder that the farmer finds it difficult to 

 tell what acreage to plant. With the annual crops, the 

 acreage is kept fairly close to the country's needs. The 

 longer the time required to grow a product, the worse the 

 periods of over- and under-production become. A short- 

 age of an annual crop may be made up in a year, but it 

 takes ten to twenty years to adjust the area of apples, 

 and fifty to a hundred years to grow a lumber crop to 

 supply a shortage in lumber. 



Apples in the Northeastern States are a good crop with 

 which to illustrate this point. If the supply of apples is 

 short, prices will be high. If this condition continues for 

 a few years, planting will be encouraged, but the trees 

 planted will have no effect on the next year's crop. Prices 

 may go still higher and so stimulate more planting. This 

 condition may continue for twenty years, after which 

 comes the deluge of apples, with more trees coming on 

 every year. This is what happened during the past 

 generation. Apples paid well from 1854 to 1864. From 

 1864 to 1874 prices were very high. They continued 

 fairly good till 1878. They then dropped and continued 

 to drop till 1896, when thousands of bushels were not 

 picked. Since 1896, prices have been rising, and for the 

 last few years they are again so high that people are 

 becoming wild about them. 



Nearly all the bearing apple orchards in New York were 

 planted between 1855 and 1878 ; planting then practically 

 stopped. It had been much overdone. In the early 

 nineties some orchards were cut down. 



In one township in Monroe County, New York, which 

 is in the center of the apple belt, 57 per cent of the apple 



