490 



Competition in Apple Growing. 



[OCT., 



States and Canada appear to be superior to this country, 

 although in exceptional seasons crops are badly damaged or 

 even destroyed by frost. The trees grow to a much greater 

 size than those of England, and, although there are fewer to 

 the acre, the yield per acre, so far as statistics are available, 

 appears to be higher. 



Insect pests are at least as numerous in the over-sea countries 

 as in our own. The larvae of the Codlin and Winter Moth 

 cause extensive damage in the former countries, while the 

 scale is very much more injurious. On the other hand, so 

 far as can be judged from reports, there is less injury from the 

 aphis and the apple sucker. Whether fungus diseases are as 

 rampant and varied in the United States and Canada as they 

 are in the United Kingdom is doubtful, but canker and scab 

 appear to be equally troublesome. 



While the expense of barrels is a serious deduction from the 

 gross returns of American and Canadian apple growers, it 

 must be borne in mind that English producers have indirectly 

 to pay for the cost of the baskets supplied to them by salesmen. 

 As to cost of transport, ocean rates are but little if any more 

 for thousands of miles than rail rates in this country are for 

 a hundred miles. 



Although wages are higher in the United States and Canada 

 than they are in Great Britain, the expenses of fruit farming 

 labour are less. In the first place/ except where the trees 

 are grown on grass land, the cultivation on the other side 

 of the Atlantic is nearly all done by horse implements, for the 

 working of which there is plenty of room between the widely- 

 planted trees. Therefore the very heavy expense of hand 

 digging and hoeing is almost, if not entirely, avoided. The 

 labourers, too, are employed only casually, and a good deal 

 more work is got out of them in a day than can be obtained in 

 this country. Such returns of the cost of working apple 

 orchards as are available show a large balance of expense 

 against the English fruit grower. 



In short, there is no doubt that the cost of producing apples 

 per acre is very much lower in the United States and Canada> 

 than it is in England. A comparison of the cost of producing 

 a given quantity is less simple. In the former countries 

 at least, apart from California and British Columbia, large 



