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ANNUAL REPORT 1918 AND 1919 



days of each year that our present varieties should cover. This would be 

 the product of 150,000 acres at the rate of 10,000 pounds per acre. 



Will the American demand ever equal this one-twentieth of a pound 

 a day? I assure you that it will not at one dollar a pound. I feel sure it 

 will if the supply ever reaches the point where avocados can be bought at 

 ten cents a pound. The avocado taste is no more an acquired one than 

 the taste for potatoes. I imagine Sir Walter Raleigh must have had quite 

 a job convincing the English that potatoes were really good to eat, but 

 there are quite a few of them eaten today; even if you can carry home a 

 dollar's worth in a paper bag. 



The taste for tomatoes has but recently been acquired, but the entire 

 acreage in the United States suitable to avocado culture, if solidly planted, 

 would not supply the demand if avocados were eaten as generally as 

 tomatoes. 



Miami, Florida, offers perhaps the only example of how the avocado 

 will be accepted by the American people when a supply becomes available. 

 There are a great many seedling trees scattered about in the door yards 

 and in small plantings near town. These fruit ripen in the late summer 

 and early fall. The average price during that season when the fruit is 

 plentiful is about twelve cents a pound. When it drops below this figure 

 the consumption increases and the price quickly swings back to normal. If 

 the crop is light cind the price is above twelve cents, the consumption by 

 the laboring classes falls off, but at twelve cents a pound, avocados take a 

 substantial place with other nutritious foods even among the negro laborers; 

 and I would estimate that the average daily consumption in Miami during 

 August and September is fully one-fourth pound per capita. 



In October when the seedling crop disappears the price of budded 

 fruit rises and the demand continues from the skilled labor and business 

 classes until the price reaches twenty cents a pound. In November the 

 price reaches twenty-five cents a pound and the consumption is then limited 

 to the more prosperous classes. This would seem to indicate that fifteen 

 cents a pound is about the price at which the avocado can be considered a 

 staple food necessity among the American people. That the price would be 

 a little higher in localities where the avocado is not grown locally is indi- 

 cated by the demand in New Orleans, Mobile, Key West, Jacksonville, 

 New York and other Gulf and Atlantic ports, where considerable fruit is 

 shipped in during the late summer from the West Indies. South Florida 

 growers are also shipping their second grade fruit to the interior southern 

 towns and the demand in these markets is increasing so rapidly that in some 

 cases cull fruit is bringing a fancy price. 



When I first became interested in the avocado, the few Trapp fruit 

 that were being shipped North from Florida, were netting the growers three 

 dollars a dozen or about twenty-five cents a pound. Even the wildest opti- 

 mist admitted that this price could not continue, but even if it dropped fifty 

 per cent, they would still have a big profit. That was twelve years ago. 

 Instead of dropping, the price for late fruit has advanced until within the 

 past year or so, net returns of fifty cents a pound have occasionally been 

 received. This price is due not so much to the superiority of the budded 

 varieties, but to the fact that nearly all the seedling Florida and West 

 Indian fruit is then off the market. 



