The Present Status of Fruit 
Manufacture 
Products 
Seth S. Walker, Exchange Supply Co., Tampa 
Practically every visitor coming into 
Florida for the first time is astonished 
and horrified at the vast amount of fruit 
going to waste—fruit that drops from the 
trees and rots; fruit that is culled out at 
the packing houses and hauled to the 
dump because for one reason or another 
it is not considered suitable to ship. It is 
perfectly obvious that this fruit represents 
a dead loss and that some means of con¬ 
verting it into an asset is extremely de¬ 
sirable. It may not be so obvious, but is 
equally true, that a large portion of the 
fruit now shipped should in reality never 
be put upon the market as fresh fruit if 
there were some other way to dispose of 
it. This third and fourth grade fruit is 
often of the best flavor but because of 
poor keeping qualities, off-size, or poor 
outward appearance it meets with small 
success on the market and continually op¬ 
erates to lower the prices for the better 
grades. Moreover, it would seem that 
new citrus plantings are coming into bear¬ 
ing at a faster rate than the market can 
be expanded to take care of this increased 
production. 
Evidently there is a very real need for 
a fruit products industry—an industry 
that will convert the non-shipable fruit 
into marketable products, valuable for 
their own sake and doubly valuable be¬ 
cause of the increased price obtained for 
high-grade fruits. 
I have taken the trouble to do a little 
figuring on the amount of grapefruit and 
oranges available for manufacturing pur¬ 
poses, basing my figures on conservative 
estimates made by men who are in a po¬ 
sition to know what they are talking 
about. The results are illuminating. 
There have already been shipped from 
the State this season over eleven million 
boxes of fruit and the total for the entire 
season will approximate twelve millions of 
boxes. Fully ten per cent—often more— 
of the fruit actually raised never reaches 
the market but goes to the dump pile. In 
other words, at the end of the present sea¬ 
son, something like one and one-third mil¬ 
lion boxes will have gone to waste. 
On the other hand it is estimated that 
twenty-five per cent of the fruit shipped 
will be classed as third and fourth grades 
—fruit that in seasons of normal prices 
gluts the markets, often failing to pay 
transportation charges and always oper¬ 
ating to demoralize the market for high 
grade fruit. Twenty-five per cent of this 
season’s shipments will amount to three 
