A Fruit Survey oe Mesa County 
i 7 
basis would do away with this practice. Even where commission 
men are honest, there is much complaint. Fruit is often not up to 
the standard, and when the market is full, as it frequently is, they 
cannot sell the fruit at good prices. The commission man 
then gets the blame for poor prices and is accused of dishonesty. 
Many growers have tried the plan of selling their fruit direct, 
or of shipping it to some town and selling it from the car. There 
have been varying degrees of success with this system of selling. 
Some men have netted good returns from it, while others failed 
utterly. Altogether, the plan is not satisfactory. 
Yielding to the pressure from many growers, the Grand Junc¬ 
tion association tried out the plan of sending men to the more im¬ 
portant middle western markets and shipped fruit to them for dis¬ 
tribution. The belief, held by many orchardists, was that these 
men could watch the market more closely and hence dispose of the 
fruit to much better advantage than the association manager in 
Grand Junction. The plan fell far short of the expectation of its 
advocates and was declared by the association to be a failure. 
The ultimate solution of the marketing problem will in all 
probability be a more closely co-operative association through 
which the members alone may ship their fruit without extra 
charges. The members must agree to sell all of their crop through 
the association, and any fruit growers who are not members must 
pay considerably more for having their products marketed by the 
organization. 
Another factor which would doubtless work a benefit in mar¬ 
keting would be the establishment of community packing houses. 
These would be located in the most accessible places and would be 
sufficiently numerous to take care of all the growers without delay 
or long hauls. These packing houses would be under the direct 
supervision of the association representatives who would see that 
all growers received fair and impartial treatment and that the fruit 
was strictly graded and carefully packed. This would insure uni¬ 
form packages and facilitate f. o. b. sales. 
Besides, with the work carefuly done, the association would 
gain a reputation for good fruit and the fruit would largely sell 
itself on its own name. Under the present system, every man 
packs his own fruit and there is little uniformity in the packages. 
Such lack of conformity leads dealers to distrust the quality of 
produce in any grade, and hence refrain from buying except on 
consignment. 
The shipping of standards, or fruit below the second grade, 
has worked a great detriment to the fruit industry. It would be 
