August, 1909,] 



129 



Edible Products, 



INDIAN AND CALIFORNIAN FRUIT. 



(From the Indian Agriculturist, Vol. 

 XXXIV., No. 5, May 1, 1909,) 



Why should not India strive to do 

 what California has done and make her 

 oranges and citrons the desired of all 

 nations? California has not succeeded 

 without considerable sustained and in- 

 telligent effort in reaching the pre- 

 eminence graphically described by a 

 writer in a London journal. India owns 

 thousands of orange trees, but their 

 fruit is not precisely the delicious luxury 

 that Calif ornian and Southern European 

 oranges prove to be. There is good 

 Swadeshi work to be done in this direc- 

 tion if Iudian fruit-growers can be in- 

 duced to copy modern methods by experts 

 educated in Indian agricultural colleges. 

 We read of a golden harvest in California 

 worth six millions sterling, from which 

 in freight alone the railways earn two 

 millions, the balance affording the orange 

 farmers a handsome profit on their 

 year's toil. The crop amounted to 1,500 

 million oranges, giving thus about 375 

 oranges to the pound sterling, a price 

 that seems small enough when it is 

 remembered that oranges sell now-a- 

 days, all over England and elsewhere, 

 at fabulously cheap rates. But the 

 Californian growers ' must feel content, 

 for they cheerfully devote all their ener- 

 gies to the harvesting of their citrus 

 crops, tens of thousands of persons being 

 employed at them during the critical 

 period. The United States alone consume 

 70 per cent- of the Californian oranges 

 and 40 per cent, of the lemons. This 

 year there cannot be quite the usual 

 contingent of Sicilian oranges and 

 lemons, but that will make little odds 

 to America, for California, in spite of 

 the taking up of land for town lots, 

 parks, etc., has been bringing yearly 

 more ground under citrus cultivation. 

 Even the loss by the dying out and 

 partial failure of old orchards has been 

 provided against by industrious new 

 planting. There are now in California 

 about 100,000 acres under 10,000,000 

 orange trees and 20,000 under lemons. 

 The fruit farmer who treats his laud 

 carefully can get a return of £100 

 • to the acre, and if he grows the 

 best ot all species, the Washington 

 Navel, he can even make £120; and 

 lemons are as profitable bub require in- 

 tense care. Land that gives such colossal 

 crops sells at £100 to £100 per acre. One 

 district, Riverside, that was in olden 

 days a sneeprun, is now, with its orange 

 orchards, valued at four millions sterling. 



In 1870 California made her first serious 

 attempt at superior orange-growing. 



17 



Until then railway facilities were scant, 

 and the cultivation of the fruit round 

 the stations of the Spanish Missions, 

 which introduced it, was found sufficient 

 for home wants and such other markets 

 as could be reached. Los Angles was 

 the pioneer exploiter of distant parts, by 

 sending shipments to San Francisco, in 

 barrels, boxes, sacks, in bulk, and in 

 every way that seemed easiest to the 

 haphazard trade of the time. The 

 growers have now combined for the 

 adoption of the best methods of treating 

 the orange from the moment of planting 

 and grafting to the despatch of the fruit 

 to the buyer. The California Fruit- 

 Growers' Exchange allows no diminu- 

 tion in the closest attention to prescribed 

 rules and thus protects the cultivators 

 and insures them a market for their 

 fruit. Mexico has recently become a 

 rival, sending grape-fruit, tangerines and 

 other citrons to American markets, 

 regardless of the half penny a pound 

 tariff she has to pay. California has 

 taken fright and has demanded pro- 

 tective measures to compensate her for 

 this inroad, has applied to railways for 

 reduction of freight charges, while she 

 has tested the economy in time and 

 money of taking the short cut to the 

 Eastern markets offered by the isthmus 

 of Tehuantepec. The packing of oranges 

 is now-a-days by no means a simple 

 process. The first duty of the packers, 

 when the carefully picked fruit comes to 

 them from the orchards in canvas bags, 

 is to run the oranges through a hopper 

 which removes any dust from them. 

 Then after due rejection of all inferior 

 specimens they are passed to the brush- 

 ing-box where spiral brushes minutely 

 perform their toilets. From the brushes 

 they run on to belts that mechanically 

 keep the produce of each grove separate 

 and send the fruit on to a weighing 

 machine. Thence they go to the sizers, 

 where a belt carries them past springs 

 which respond to the touch of each 

 orange with an electric current that 

 operates "kickers" which send the fruit 

 into troughs according to size. Thence 

 theoianges go to bins and are wrapped 

 in paper by machinery, which includes 

 a printing press that stamps the name 

 of brand and packer on the wrapper. 

 The last process is dropping the oranges 

 into shallow bins whence they are placed 

 in the packing-boxes of commerce, which 

 are then automatically nailed up. 

 Lemons require even more care, they 

 are cut, not pulled, from the trees while 

 green, and hung to ripen from the 

 rafters of the packing-house where they 

 are given ample time to colour before 

 being shipped. An accidental bruise to 

 their rind must be avoided, the packer 



