4 THE OUTLOOK FOR ORCHARDING 



women who knew absolutely nothing of orcharding except what 

 they read in the magazines or daily papers. Go into any section 

 except our very best orchard regions and you will find plenty of 

 examples like the orchard shown in Figure 1. One need have 

 little fear of the competition of such an orchard as this. 



Insects and Diseases. — Another thing which will help to 

 delay this dreaded time of over-production is the constantly 

 increasing list of orchard pests. Men have attempted to compute 

 the loss from this source and have placed it among the millions 

 of bushels. But whether we accept this estimate or not, no one 

 who has seen such things at work as the bitter rot of the apple 

 and the brown rot of the peach and plum or the codling moth of 

 the apple and the cureulio of the peach and plum can fail to 

 realize that the loss is tremendous. 



Slow Returns. — Still another factor which is always going to 

 act as a brake on orchard setting is the length of time required 

 to bring trees to profitable bearing. If a man starts in the dairy 

 business he can buy a cow and sit right dowTi and milk her 

 (always provided of course that she is giving milk), so that his 

 income begins at once ; or if he starts in the trucking business it 

 requires only a season to get returns. But an orchard is a long- 

 time investment, and relatively few people are going to have the 

 patience and the pocketbook to wait for returns (Fig. 2). 



No Advertising. — If one is cataloging the hopeful factors in 

 the orchard situation, he certainly should not omit the fact that 

 up to date there has been almost nothing done in the way of 

 advertising. If red apples were as persistently advertised as 

 some patent medicines, the supply never would overtake the 

 demand. This is one of the improvements which ought to be 

 undertaken next, and the writer believes so emphatically in its 

 value that he has devoted an entire chapter to the subject. 



Bad Marketing. — If one wants further hope for the future of 

 the orchard business, think of the way in which most of our 

 fruit is marketed at the present time ! If any one can think of 

 methods better calculated to decrease consumption than those 

 frequently in use he is a genius. Poor fniit, poorly handled and 

 worse packed, is shipped into the market without the shghtest 



