FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
179 
years of the production in Cuba and Flor¬ 
ida, which may be of interest: 
Year 
Cuba. 
Florida. 
1905. . 
. t 826,985 
370,688 
1906 
—- 949.412 
574,688 
1907 
— 661,634 
577,806 
1908 
9510,966 
640,829 
1909 
---1,263,466 
Uiio ,547 
1910 
. 1,118,524 
45 °. 000 
1911 
—1,881,979 
552,ooo 
1912 
1,222,000 
668,000 
As will be 
seen by this 
comparison, 
commencing with 1909, Cuba has ship¬ 
ped into our American markets annually 
over a million crates of pineapples, while 
the production in Florida has for the 
last four years following 1909 been only 
about half of her 1909 crop. 
This condition resulted from various 
causes; first, from the tact that Cuba 
could grow and lay down in the aver¬ 
age markets of the United States, over 
the same lines of transportation that the 
Florida pineapples moved, at an average 
cost of $1.45 per crate, while the cost 
to the Florida grower was $1.80 per 
crate. This handicap was serious; but, 
coupled with this condition, we encoun¬ 
tered at this time a blight which for a 
time seemed destined to exterminate the 
industry in certain sections, and espe¬ 
cially the older plantations, where reset¬ 
ting old fields had become necessary. 
Just what the cause was, has never been 
definitely settled. Different opinions 
have been advanced, both by the layman 
and the scientific investigator, but the 
concensus of opinion seems to be that 
weather conditions played an important 
part in the havoc that resulted; these 
conditions being a series of excessively 
dry years, which reduced the soils to a 
condition where they were incapable of 
taking up the usual heavy applications of 
fertilizers that were necessary to produce 
a remunerative crop of pineapples. This 
phase of the business was new to practi¬ 
cally every grower, and in his dilemma 
over the declining condition of his fields, 
he added more fuel to the flames by ap¬ 
plying more fertilizer to a soil already 
loaded up with an excess that was only 
lying there creating poisonous gases to 
destroy the tender roots as they would 
attempt to penetrate the soil from the 
parent plant. The soil was simply suf¬ 
fering from a case of acute indigestion, 
and no one seemed competent to properly 
diagnose the trouble. 
But a change in weather conditions 
has thrown a great light on the situation, 
and fields that were not too far gone 
have in some cases practically regained a 
healthy condition. That the theory of 
indigestion was correct is further borne 
out by the fact that in many instances 
when the trouble was first decided to be 
serious, and that a curtailment of acre¬ 
age was necessary, only the best parts 
of fields were continued with the regu¬ 
lar heavy application of fertilizers, while 
some of the less vigorous parts were 
fertilized but lightly, and some not at all. 
It was soon discovered that the fields 
which were continued under heavy fer~ 
tilization continued to wilt, while those 
receiving the lesser amount, and even 
those receiving none at all , in many in¬ 
stances recovered. This did not prove to 
be true in every instance, but was suf¬ 
ficiently so in the majority to convince 
