REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OX THE FRUIT INDUSTRY. 511 



Horticultural College, the East Sussex County Council Fruit Station at 

 Uckfield, and, by the kindness of the Duke of Bedford, the Experimental 

 Fruit Farm near Woburn, where a most interesting day was spent. The 

 Chairman also paid a visit to the large Strawberry plantation of Messrs. 

 Bellis Bros., at Holt, Denbighshire. As was only to be expected in the 

 course of so exhaustive an inquiry, many questions were raised which 

 affected other industries besides that of fruit-growing ; but, while confining 

 the evidence, so far as possible, to those points on which the fruit industry 

 was affected, the Committee did not see their way to exclude some evidence 

 which raised much wider issues. 



Extent of the Industry. 



3. It may be useful to begin by giving some figures showing the extent 

 of the industry as it exists to-day. According to the official statistics, the 

 total acreage under orchards in 1901 was 243,008 acres, of which 236,705 

 were in England, 2,490 in Scotland, and 3,813 in Wales. These figures 

 refer to orchards only, not to small fruit, though in many cases there 

 would be small fruit under the orchard trees, but that is dealt with 

 separately. Mr. Rew, the Head of the Statistical Branch of the Board of 

 Agriculture and Fisheries, was of opinion that these figures were fairly 

 accurate, but, as they are compiled from Returns voluntarily made by 

 owners and occupiers of land, there would doubtless be some omissions 

 and inaccuracies ; in addition to which, no account is taken of orchards in 

 any holdings of less than an acre in extent, nor of the isolated trees and 

 clumps constituting the remains of former orchards, so prevalent in 

 Herefordshire and Devonshire, nor of fruit trees growing in hedgerows, 

 as in the case of the Damson trees lining the hedges in the Holt district. 

 Next, taking the figures by counties, we find that six counties comprise 

 three-fifths of the orchard acreage of Great Britain, viz. Kent, with 29,055 

 acres ; Herefordshire, with 28,042 acres ; Devonshire, with 27,346 acres ; 

 Somersetshire, with 25,265 acres ; Worcestershire, with 22,387 acres ; 

 Gloucestershire, with 20,385 acres. Herefordshire has the largest orchard 

 area in proportion to its size of any county, no less than 6 per cent, of the 

 cultivated land being orchard ; Worcestershire follows next with 5*4 per 

 cent., and Kent stands third, with 3*7 per cent. 



4. Turning next to Small Fruit, the total acreage in 1904 was 77,947 

 acres, 70,612 acres being in England, 6,072 in Scotland, and 1,263 in 

 Wales. In this case one county, viz. Kent, is far ahead of any other, 

 having no less than 22,549 acres ; next comes Middlesex, with 4,700 

 acres ; then Worcestershire, with 4,546 acres ; then Cambridgeshire, with 

 4,403 acres ; then Norfolk, with 4,030 acres ; then Hampshire, with 2,472 

 acres; then Essex with 2,061. No other county reaches 2,000 acres of 

 small fruit. In this connection it should be stated that these figures and 

 those for orchards present to some extent a double return. Small fruit is 

 very often grown in orchards, especially when the orchard trees are young ; 

 consequently, the same land would in many cases be entered under the 

 heading both of orchards and of small fruit — and it is not possible to 

 obtain absolutely accurate figures of the total acreage under fruit generally 

 which, however, at the outside would probably not exceed 300,000 acres. 



