March, 1928] 



AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS 1927 



A year's j>runings in orchard of A. D. Culljiuu uf HulU«, oue of those where 



time studies were made. 



system, have required little work. The work on these is assumed to 

 approximate the requirement of replacing and maintaining the 13,650 

 trees. Later the labor requirements on different ages of orchards will 

 be analyzed separately as far as possible. 



The approximate average human labor requirements per tree on all 

 the orchards were as follows: pruning, 11 minutes; brush disposal, 

 4 minutes; spraying, 9 minutes; fertilizing, 2 minutes; tillage, 5 minutes; 

 setting and resetting, 1 minute; mowing, 4 minutes; mulching, 1 minute; 

 protection, 13^2 minutes; thinning, 4 minutes; propping, 1}4 minutes; 

 harvesting, 60 minutes; miscellaneous, 2}^ minutes. Total, 107 minutes. 



Dividing the time b\' months, and using a weighted average of the 

 requirements per tree, it was found that a block of 1,000 trees for the 

 year required 190 hours in April, 144 hours in Ma}^, and 130 in June, 

 87 in July, 108 in August, 328 in September, 609 in October, 92 in No- 

 vember, 3 in December, 5 in January, 11 in February and 83 in March. 

 A study of these figures suggests that 1,000 trees may well be considered 

 a minimum unit for specialized fruit farms. Prior to harvest, 190 hours 

 was the largest labor demand in any single month. The operation of 

 such a farm would require either co-operation with neighbors or the 

 employment of help at certain seasons because it is not practicable for 

 one man to do some of the work alone. The figures do suggest, how- 

 ever, that as far as time required is concerned and as now operated, a 

 1,000-tree orchard represents not more than a one-man proposition. 

 (Purnell Fund.) 



