1006 Apple Growing in Australasia and America. [Feb., 



only obtained as a result of common adversity and appreciation 

 of the unpleasant consequences of failure to co-operate. The 

 failure of co-operative institutions among English fruit growers 

 may be ascribed not so much to any inherent inability on their 

 part to be loyal to each other in adversity, as to the fact that 

 times have never been so bad that a grower could not find a 

 market of some sort on his own initiative. The colonial grower 

 produces fruit under conditions which mean the inevitable yearly 

 glut of the local markets : the co-operative marketing association 

 or the State Legislature, which controls the export organisation, 

 can thus impose stringent regulations as to quality of produce 

 exported and can command implicit obedience from the growers 

 under threat of refusal of their produce, for which there is no 

 local outlet. An Inspector of a Pacific Coast State who finds 

 Codlin Moth infection in a single box of Extra Fancy grade 

 dessert apples proceeding by rail for export, will condemn the 

 whole carload — often 800 boxes. One can easily see therefor 3 

 that growers of export fruit there, will take more than a leisurely 

 interest in eradicating Codlin Moth from their plantations. 



Cheap production by labour paid at high rates has been made 

 possible in fruit-growing by the adoption of those principles of 

 factory production that have brought such success to other 

 industries — namely, high production of a limited variety by a 

 minimum of labour. 



x\ustralia has concentrated on the small open-centred Bash " 

 type of tree grown on Northern Spy stock, which confers freedom 

 from Woolly Aphis (Schizoneura lanigera) on the root system. 

 In Western Australia it is reckoned that a man and his wife, 

 with the help of two casual labourers at harvest time at 12s. 6d. 

 per day each (1920), can do all the work of cultivating, pruning, 

 thinning and spraying 12 acres of orchard planted with these 

 small trees at 20 feet square and growing to a maximum height 

 of 11 feet. This area represents an average of 3.600 boxes of 

 exportable fruit per annum on the best managed plantations. 

 All fruit can be gathered from the ground or a very small step- 

 ladder, and intercropping is out of the question owing to the 

 necessity for continual summer cultivation to tide over the rain- 

 less period. The export varieties of Western Australia are four 

 only — Cleopatra. Jonathan. Five Crown, and Munro. with Yates 

 as a probability in future : all these are keeping dessert varieties. 

 Western Australia, while starting late, has been able to profit by 

 the mistakes made by other States, so that her apple industry 

 may row be looked upon as the most up-to-date on the continent. 



