50 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
So after summing up the condition of orchards in all parts of 
the country, the number of trees of bearing age, and the number 
of trees that are planted and not yet in bearing, it seems that 
there is a great future for commercial orcharding. I can see no 
reason why the wide-awake apple grower of the Great Central 
West, who has his orchard situated on the right kind of soil, and 
gives it the proper care, should not be very successful. He will 
have the same demands from the larger towns and cities of his 
territory that he has always had, and he will have a much great¬ 
er demand from the small towns and farming communities than 
he had during the past 10 to 20 years. 
Twenty-five to thirty-five years ago there was much planting 
of semi commercial orchards in the Central West; almost every 
farmer through the Corn Belt planted from fifty to two or three 
hundred apple trees. During the past fifteen or twenty years 
these orchards have been producing considerable quantities of 
largely inferior fruit which supplied the local markets and quite 
a lot found its way to the nearby city markets and competed 
with fruit of better quality. These orchards are mostly dead or 
dying at this time, and these farmers have not, and will not re¬ 
place them with orchards of the same size. When these semi 
commercial orchards began to die off home owners were slow to 
renew their plantings and as a result there are many farm homes 
today that do not have either old orchards or young orchards 
coming on. The old orchard has died and the farmers have not 
planted any young trees to this time. As a result, a great many 
of these farmers who a few years ago were producers of fruit, 
not only for their own use but for the nearby markets, are in the 
market to buy fruit for their own use, and will be for a number 
of years. The home owner who is planting today is planting 
only from twelve to twenty-five and up to fifty trees in his family 
orchard. He is not expecting to sell any fruit from this orchard, 
but is planting it merely for his own use. 
This Central West also contains a number of large cities that 
receive and distribute a great bulk of the apple production of 
the United States. It is hardly more than 500 or 600 miles from 
any of this territory to Minneapolis, Chicago, Indianapolis or 
Pittsburg, and these are all very important apple markets of 
the country. The matter of freight charges has in the past, 
and always will favor the apple grower of this territory. Com¬ 
petition from the extreme west, and to a lesser extent from the 
east, is handicapped on this account, and this difference alone 
more than offsets any natural advantages that some sections of 
these districts may have. 
Before the war, apple growers in the central west found it 
fairly profitable to grow apples, spray them thoroughly, and put 
them on the cars at fifty cents a bushel or $1.00 per hundred 
pounds in bulk. Ten to twenty cents per bushel would put this 
fruit on Chicago or other large markets so that it could be sold 
for sixty or seventy-five cents per bushel, and give the grower a 
fair return. Pre-war freight rates made it cost the northwest 
grower fifty to sixty cents per bushel to get his apples to these 
markets, so that the grower of the Central West could market 
his fruit at a profit in competition with, the grower from the 
Pacific Coast while he was getting only freight charges. Figures 
taken by the United States Department of Agriculture on cost of 
production items in the Northwest, including labor, material, in¬ 
vestment, insurance, taxes, etc., showed that it cost about eighty 
cents per bushel box to produce fruit in that section, which, add¬ 
ed to the freight at that time, of fifty to sixty cents, made a 
total cost of putting their fruit on these markets at $1.30 to $1.40 
per bushel. Present freight rates make this cost considerably 
higher. While the cost of production and also freight charges 
have increased in about the same proportion for the grower of 
the Central West, the difference in cost of production in these 
sections is wider than it was before the war. 
Men who have made a careful study of the cost of production 
in different sections of the country, state that there is approxi¬ 
mately fifty cents per bushel advantage to the grower of the 
Missouri River section over the grower of the extreme north¬ 
west and as stated above, the grower from this territory, before 
the war, could make a fair profit on this fifty cent difference. I 
do not believe however, that first class apples from any part of 
the country will have to sell at such a price in the future. Well 
grown apples, carefully graded, and apples that will keep, have 
almost always sold readily at $1.00 per bushel or more on the 
markets of the country, and undoubtedly these figures will be a 
low price for the future. 
Our company has grown apples commercially to some extent 
in eastern Nebraska, and while our location is probably not the 
very best, considered from every angle, for commercial orchard¬ 
ing, we have made very satisfactory profit from this source. Our 
forty acre orchard produced about 75,000 bushels of apples dur¬ 
ing one seven year period; and during the life of these trees 
which ranged from twenty-five to thirty years, this orchard 
produced more than 100,000 bushels of apples, or averaged about 
100 bushels per acre annually from the time the trees were set 
until they were- cut out after a large proportion of them had 
died. Several crops of this orchard approached $10,000 in value, 
and each of these crops would have paid for the land on which 
the trees stood, and left enough extra money to pay for the care 
of the orchard during those particular years. The net profits, 
after all expenses including planting, cultivation, pruning, spray¬ 
ing, harvesting, and the cost of several hand sprayers and three 
power sprayers all of which were not worn out on this orchard, 
was about $43,000.00. This orchard was grubbed out several 
years ago so that none of the heavy crops were produced during 
the period of extreme high prices. 
Numerous orchards in this same territory and in other parts 
of the Central West can be pointed to, that have produced from 
three to five hundred dollars per acre net, and even more, dur¬ 
ing the past few years when prices have been at the high mark. 
One Richardson County, Nebraska, orchard gave a gross return 
of $20,000 from forty acres in 1917. Another forty acre orchard 
in the same county produced 5,000 barrels of high class apples 
in a single season. And so I might go on and point to numer¬ 
ous instances where very large returns have been received from 
orchards in the Central West. 
Getting profits from apple growing has been easy in the fav¬ 
ored districts of almost any states east of the Rocky Mountains, 
except in the extreme south, when good judgment was used in 
picking the site, selecting the varieties and caring for and spray¬ 
ing the orchard. There has never been a time when well grown 
fruit from this part of the country could not find a market that 
would give some profit to the grower. The future certainly 
promises more than the past has given. As already pointed out, 
the acreage has practically been cut in two so that it appears 
that there can hardly be an over-production until many million 
more trees are brought into bearing than we have now. 
There are also possibilities of developing foreign markets for 
a great many more of our apples than we have been exporting. 
European markets as well as the Orient and South America fur¬ 
nish tremendous possibilities as consumers of the American 
apple. Before the war we exported about 2,000,000 barrels an¬ 
nually. Direct shipments to South America began in 1910 and 
in four years the shipments to this continent increased about 
400 per cent. These factors for increasing our markets are 
likely to prevent any over-production for years to come. The 
lack of planting since 1910 is apt to cause an actual shortage in 
the near future. 
Are the nurserymen of this territory doing what they should 
to encourage orchard planting? True, we are sending our catalogs 
and our representatives to the home owners in all parts of the 
country, and using as much persuasion as possible to get these 
home owners to plant trees and plants of all kinds. We have not 
however, shown enough interest in the spreading of commercial 
orchard planting encouragement, and I believe it is up to the 
nurserymen of this Association to get more information before 
the people, that will interest them in this industry. In other 
words, we should spread more propaganda. The work under¬ 
taken by the Market Development Bureau of the National Asso¬ 
ciation is fine. However this takes up mainly the home orchard 
problems and is intended to encourage home planting rather 
than commercial planting. You ask how we should do this. We, 
also as individuals can do quite a lot of it through our local and 
farm papers. Such publications are always willing and anxious 
to get articles that are instructive and that tend to encourage 
the planting of commercial orchards in sections where commer¬ 
cial orcharding is reasonably profitable. A little time given to 
the study of these matters by nurserymen and a little time spent 
in the preparation of articles and handed to the editors of these 
papers will certainly help to stimulate the demand for trees for 
commercial planting. 
I also believe we should have a slogan that is suggestive to 
every reader. I feel that a greater part of the orders received, 
especially by salesmen, are obtained by the use of this idea; 
“There’s a place for more trees and shrubs.” It is a challenge 
to the country, community, and individual; to the commercial or 
home orchard prospect; and even the man who needs only a few 
trees to fill in. Suppose we all used this as a slogan. The fol¬ 
low up with it is to suggest the place and what to place there. 
“I haven’t a place for it” is the most common “No” encountered 
by nursery salesmen. But keeping on with my subject, com¬ 
mercial orcharding, the place is America, the Middle West, your 
community, the prospect’s place. 
It seems to me that we can say considerable more than we 
usually do in our catalogs about commercial orcharding. A half 
page or a page in the catalog pointing out what can be done, 
giving some definite figures showing what has been accomplished 
in certain sections of the territory, will certainly help very ma- 
