FRUIT PRODUCTION IN AMERICA.

Motueka Star, Volume IV, Issue 181, 15 May 1903, Page 5

FRUIT PRODUCTION IN AMERICA.

America is the ' greatest fruit producing country in the world. In 1900 there were 367,164,694 fruit trees in the whole country as against 193,452,588111 1890. The increase in the plums and prunes in the last decade has been 334 per cent, in apricots 216 per cent, in pears 246 per cent, in cherries 111 per cent, in peaches 85 per cent, and in \ apples 67 per cent. Nowhere else are fruits grown in large orchard areas, and nowhere are fruits used so universally. In the early history, of America fruit growing was incidental to'general agricultural crops. Now it is the dominant type of agriculture in many sections of the country. Whole regions are devoted to horticulture, and railroads, steamboats, and other accompaniments of special trade and commerce have been the direct outcome of the fruit ! growing interests. Among other things, one of the most important factors in the rapid rise in American fruit growing has been the application of the principles of refrigeration to car line, steam boats, and warehouses. Formerly, fruit growing was restricted near the large consuming centres ; now the refrigerator car has made fruit growing possible In the more remote parts of the country. The refrigerator compartments on shipboard have, likewise, made the export trade in perishabie products possible, while the cold storage warehouses, which store from one to four million barrels of apples each year, and in which over fifty million cubic feet a\-e devoted to the fruit industry, are equalising markets and prices by extending the season of fruits, and by preventing gluts and their accompanying demoralised state of the fruit trade.