42 BULLETIN 1416, U. 8. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
of the barrel region. Quality in the East is often affected by excessive 
rains which interfere with spraying and increase the damage from 
insects, blight, scab, and sooty blotch. 
LOCAL CONDITIONS 
The general situation must be known for a fair judgment, but 
local conditions are of prime importance. In the specialized apple 
districts the principal growers are likely to get together frequently 
by telephone, at public meetings, or by visits. Thus they keep one 
another informed regarding the way in which the local crop is showing 
up at harvest time. They are interested in discussing the number 
and activities of the buyers and the terms of contract offered; whether 
the dealers are eager for business or indifferent; what prices they are 
paying and whether they are buying for shipment, storage, or export. 
FAVORABLE SEASON 
The kind of year the grower likes to see is one with a light general 
crop but good local production of good quality; the consumers busy 
at good wages; export buyers active; a good labor supply, plenty of 
barrels, Hackers and empty cars, and many competing buyers coming 
to the farm. Opposite conditions include a heavy general crop, with 
much fruit of low shipping quality and few buyers in sight. 
MISTAKES IN FORECASTING 
Probably the most common error in sizing up the outlook is to give 
too much weight to conditions in one’s own orchard or neighborhood. 
Another is faints to accept the vast and almost incredible difference 
that often appears between indications early in spring and actual 
crop conditions in the same regions late in summer. Too much atten- 
tion may be given to more or less prejudiced reports and gossip of the 
trade. Fre uently one’s viewpoint may be influenced unconsciously 
by the good or bad conditions which prevailed the season before. 
Sometimes there is failure to give sufficient weight to some new or 
unusual influence or, on the other hand, the effect of a new but 
limited condition may be emphasized out of proportion to its impor- 
tance. Dealers and growers alike make such mistakes, but many 
learn from experience to forecast the majority of market seasons 
fairly close to the actual outcome. 
LONG-RANGE APPLE OUTLOOK 
The apple outlook over a term of years seems reasonably good from 
the producer’s point of view. One of the most favorable aspects is 
the decrease.in planting during the period of unsettled, abnormal 
conditions and high costs from 1914 onward. Such periods of light 
planting in the past have been followed in due time by corresponding 
periods during which fewer new orchards come into bearmng. Mean- 
while older orchards have been decreasing from one cause or another 
and the situation tends to favor the producer until a period of active 
new planting affects production. The apple industry for nearly a 
century past has experienced a succession of such alternating periods 
of heavy and light planting. 
Horticultural writers as early as 1850 were anxiously checusais 
the danger of overproduction based on what would seem now a sma 
area of new plantings in New York. There was another time of 
