SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1878.] WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1894. FRUIT GROWING.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4788, 1 August 1894, Page 2

SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1878.] WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1894. FRUIT GROWING.

At a meeting of tho North Wairarapa Liberal Association on Monday evening Inst, it was reported that a caucus meeting of fruit,growers present, resolved to call a meeting of all persons interested in fruit-grow-ing for the purpose of discussing the advisability of forming a. Fruitgrowers' Association. It was remarked that this industry was at present in a most unsatisfactory condition in this district. Speaking from ninny years experience we should say that the industry in question is not only at thu present time in an unsatisfactory condition, but has boon so for a number of years. Some half dozen men in the community grow a limited quantity ;of fruit for the local market at a profit to themselves. These might produce more if they possessed more capital, but we fail to see what other disadvantage they labeur under, As yet they are unable to stock the local market, and it is somewhat premature to talk about sending fruit to Wellington, Wo fail to see any real benefit to be derived from a Fruit Growers' Association unless it took tlio form of a co-operative effort to bring a larger area of fruit laud into cultivation with tho object of feeding a market like Wellington. More capital, more labour, and more intelligence require to bo put into the fruit industry before it can become anything considerable in this district. An irrigated frnit farm of, say, fifty or one hundred acres, would, we believe, be a splendid investment, under proper control and with an adequate capital to work it. If a co-operative association, with a capital of two or three thousand pounds, were formed to develop a fruit industry in this neighbourhood, it-would soon make it boom, No State or political help is necessary, as repossess the raw material for pomological production; we have a market at our doors, but we are unenterprising and deficient in self-reliance. We let the Chinamen beat us!