210 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



measure, be borne by his foreign competitors. Even before the war 

 the cost of production of one of the chief horticultural crops — apples — 

 was no higher in this country than in that of our main competitors. 

 There are also certain other apparently minor but really important 

 reasons for optimism with regard to the prospects of intensive cultiva- 

 tion. Among these is tiie increasing use of road in lieu of rail 

 transport for the marketing of horticultural produce. The advantages 

 of motor over rail transport for the carriage of perishable produce for 

 relatively short distances — say up to 75 miles from market — lie in its 

 greater punctuality, economy of handling, and elasticity. Only a- poet 

 native of a land of orchards could have written the lines : ' When T 

 consider everything that grows holds in perfection but a single moment.' 

 Fruit crops ripen rapidly and more or less simultaneously throughout a 

 given district. They must be put on the market forthwith or are 

 useless. A train service, no matter how well organised, does not seem 

 able to cope with gluts, and hence it arises that a season of abundance 

 in the country rarely means a like plenty to the consumer. I am aware 

 that the problem of gluts is by no means simple and that the railways 

 are sometimes blamed unjustly for failing to cope with them, but 

 nevertheless I believe that, as Kent has discovered, the motor-lorry 

 will be more and more called in to redress the balance between the 

 home growers and the foreign producers in favour of the former; for 

 by its use the goods can be delivered with certainty in time to catch 

 the market and thus give the home producer the advantage due to 

 propinquity which should be his. Increasing knowledge of food values, 

 together with the general rise in the standard of living, also present 

 features of good augury to the intensive cultivator. Jam and tomatos 

 and primeurs may be taken as texts. 



In 19l4 the consumption of jam in the United Kingdom amounted 

 to about a spoonful a day per person. The more exact figures are 

 2 oz. per week, or 126,000 tons per annum. 



It is difficult to estimate the area under jam fruit — plums, straw- 

 berry, raspberry, currants, &c. — required to produce this tonnage, but 

 it may be put at between 10,000 and 20,000 acres. 



By 1918, thanks to the wisdom of the Anny authorities in insisting 

 on a large ration of jam for the troops, and thanks also to the scarcity 

 and quality of margarine, the consumption of jam had more than 

 doubled. From 126,000 tons of 1914 it reached 340,000 tons in 1918. 

 To supply this ration would require the produce of from 25,000 to 

 60,000 acres of orchard, which in turn would directly employ the labour 

 of say from 5,000 to 10,000 men. Yet even the tonnage consumed 

 in 1918 only allows a meagre ration of little more than a couple of 

 spoonfuls a day. It may therefore be anticipated that if, as is probable, 

 albeit only because of the immanence of margarine, the new-found public 

 taste for jam endures, fruit-growers in this country will find a con- 

 siderable and profitable extension in supplying this demand. 



The remarkable increase in 'consumption which the tomato has 

 achieved would seem to support this conclusion. Fifty years ago, as 

 Mr. Eobbins has mentioned in his paper on ' Intensive Cultivation ' 

 (Journal of Board of Agriculture, xxv. No. 12, March 1919), this 



