250 



Marketing of Fruit. 



[June, 



is probably as fine a fruit as is produced anywhere in the world, 

 and much superior in flavour to that produced in places where 

 the atmosphere is drier and the heat of the sun more intense. 

 The fault appears to be not in the article but in the methods of 

 packing and marketing — the manner in which it is presented to 

 the public. It therefore becomes necessary to consider the 

 present methods of marketing and distribution, and to see where 

 improvements can be made, what direction reforms should take, 

 and by w^hom they should be made. 



There are, of course, growers in this country who not only 

 pick their fruit carefully, but grade it into convenient sizes before 

 packing into marketable parcels. Such growers experience little 

 difficulty in marketing most of their produce, but their number 

 is not large. Few people in England have seen apples put 

 through grading machines before being properly packed, for even 

 in Kent the practice even now is by no means general. The 

 usual orchard scene with which one is so familiar, especially in 

 the orchards of Somerset and Devon, is that of apples being 

 shaken down from the trees, and picked up and thrown into 

 barrels; or gathered by hand into baskets and then poured in 

 bulk into barrels. Large and small, sound and blemished, 

 perfect and ill-shaped fruit, are all mixed in the same package. 

 When full the package is roughly handled to shake the fruit down 

 tightly, straw is placed on the top and the package is ready for 

 market. Seldom are the packages weighed, for it is generally 

 accepted that the weight of apples in any given receptacle is 

 known, and is constant irrespective of the variety. 



Late varieties gathered in bulk and stored in heaps covered 

 with straw" in lofts, keep moderately well. The packing of these 

 for the market shows little or no advance on those marketed 

 direct from the orchard. 



Better packing and better delivery prevails in the few cases 

 where the grower deals direct with the consumer or the retailer, 

 but the quantity of fruit that is marketed in this way is small 

 compared with that sent to the markets proper. Tn most eases 

 growers generally are not inchned to treat their packing seriously, 

 the result being that the salesman has either to sell the produce 

 cheap, or to waste time in a busy market and have the goods 

 re-sorted and packed with dear labour. Neither course gives 

 satisfaction to the grower. The retailer buying the unsorted 

 goods is generally dissatisfied. He often finds the best on the 

 top, and a lot of small inferior fruit at the bottom. Possibly too 

 the packages are less in weight than he was expecting. It would 

 not be fair to blame the grower for all these offences, though 



