Committee Report on Vegetables 
PROFITABLE POTATO GROWING 
E. S. Hubbard, Federal Point, Fla. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
The members of the standing com¬ 
mittee on vegetables will submit indi¬ 
vidual reports, thereby covering a wid¬ 
er field and presenting more varied side 
lights on the numerous problems of the 
industry. 
The profitable expansion of vegeta¬ 
ble growing in Florida is limited by 
freight and express charges and the 
costs of marketing. If the costs of 
transportation were cut in two so Flor¬ 
ida early vegetables could come into 
more general use at lower prices 
among the people of the North who 
work for a living, there is no doubt 
there would be five to ten times as 
great production as we have at pres¬ 
ent. 
As matters now stand profitable veg¬ 
etable growing is largely restricted to 
certain localities where there is suffi¬ 
cient quantity production to load re¬ 
frigerator cars with perishable pro¬ 
ducts, for instance, the lower East 
Coast and Webster for tomatoes, San¬ 
ford for celery and lettuce and Coleman 
for cabbages. Many ventures in prom¬ 
ising localities have failed from this fact 
for all profits from shipments by ex¬ 
press in cool weather were more than 
offset by losses when the weather grew 
warm from shipments that arrived in 
bad order and sufficient quantity was 
not produced to use refrigeration. 
In the section where I live, which ex¬ 
tends from St. Augustine to the To- 
moka river and from the St. Johns 
river to the ocean, the main winter veg¬ 
etable crop is Irish potatoes. 
Other vegetables grow equally well 
on these soils, which are mainly flat- 
woods underlaid with clay, but the Irish 
potato is more easily followed with 
corn, hay and other summer crops. The 
crop goes out by train loads at the 
heaviest shipping points without re¬ 
frigeration. It is handled largely by 
distributing firms or associations, f. o. 
b. buyers are numerous and the whole 
auxiliary business of finance, fertilizers, 
seed, barrels and supplies has devel¬ 
oped around this one crop. 
It is not a bonanza crop compared 
with the fabulous returns sometimes 
gained from other vegetables, com¬ 
pared with the average net returns it is 
an expensive crop to put in. Some 
people never are ultimately successful 
and some seasons in some places the 
146 
