The Horticultural The Use of Vegetables and Fruit.— The use of fruit and especially vegetables is steadily growing for two great reasons, economic and physiologic. The economic reason applies especially to countries like China and Japan where the population is so dense that it is necessary to utilize the land to the fullest extent, but it also applies to the growing population of the manufacturing regions of the United States and Europe. As the population becomes denser and as the proportion who dwell in cities increases, the prices of grain and meat rise rapidly. The acreage actually farmed becomes too small I to support the entire population unless more intensive methods are employed. Vegetables are especially adapted to intensive cultivation because they yield a large amount of food per acre and grow so rapidly that two crops can often be raised in one season. Improvements in methods of canning, preserving, and drying, and better facilities for transportation and cold storage also help by making it possible to utilize vegetables more widely and at all seasons.
The physiologic reason for using fruits and vegetables depends on the recent discovery that they contain substances called vitamines which are essential to health. The economic demand of poor people for vegetables because they arc cheap and the physiologic demand of intelligent people for both fruits and vegetables at all seasons because they are healthful has greatly stimulated the growth of communities whose business is to furnish fruit and garden produce to city markets. Such farming is called market gardening when carried on close to the cities, and truck farming when carried on farther away and hence less intensively. Market gardeners, truck farmers, and fruit growers, as well as the people who raise flowers, are known as horticulturists.
From year to year the people of the cities not only buy greater amounts of fruits and vegetables but are more discriminating in their purchases. They demand high quality and freshness throughout the I year. Some pay fancy prices for fruits that are out of season. It is not unusual to see strawberries in February at fifty cents or a dollar a box, while peaches at that season are sometimes quoted at seventy-five cents apiece. Fruit sold at such prices is generally grown under glass by specialists in horticulture and furnishes only a small percentage of the total consumption. The demands upon which the market gar deners, truck farmers, and fruit growers mainly depend are illustrated by the almost daily purchases of lettuce, cabbages, onions, apples, and oranges by thousands of families of moderate income.
The Geographic and Economic Control of the development of modern transportation each region was content to eat those fruits and vegetables which the climate permitted. In the more progressive regions a few people had greenhouses and many gardeners used cold frames to start their early vegetables. Today this is greatly changed, for transportation allows keen competition between widely separated areas. For example, in supplying the northern cities with the lettuce and spinach which now appear on many tables almost daily even in winter, truck farms all the way from Florida northward compete with local market gardeners who raise their product under glass. Such competition leads the gardeners to specialize in what are called " cash crops " especially adapted to their particular regions. The crops which are specialties in a given community are determined largely by the following considerations.
(1) Other things being equal, the producer near the market has a great advantage, not only because of lower freight and express charges, but because his product is relatively fresh and his losses from decay and waste are relatively slight. Half of many a shipment to New York from the South is thrown away. (2) Soil is also a factor of some im portance. A sandy loam is favorable because it warms quickly and facilitates early crops, and is also easily, cleanly, and cheaply worked. (3) The most important factor is climate, which determines not only the season at which crops can be raised but how many crops per year. The South Atlantic States and California have the advantage of a long growing season. They often harvest two crops for sale and raise a third for fertilizer. On the other hand, the warmer states, especially in the East, have more trouble than the cooler states with insect pests, their soil is more leached by the rain so that more fertilizers are needed, and their labor supply, being largely colored, is less energetic and in telligent.
The progressive truck fanner wishes his locality to possess three other advantages: namely, plenty of clear water for irrigation or for preparing vegetables for market, a good air drainage so that cold damp air will not settle over the crops in spring, and good roads so that trucks may quickly reach the shipping points. Horticulture also requires a dense population because it demands a great deal of cheap seasonal labor. The plowing and planting, the cultivating by horse or machine, and the heavier harvesting as well as the work of taking the vegetables to market or peddling them from house to house generally require men, but the careful hand weeding, the picking of small fruits, peas, beans, and so, forth, and many other little jobs need the work of hundreds of women, girls, and children. The supply of labor must be not only cheap but of a sort which may be recruited quickly for the short harvesting season. When fruits and vegetables are ripe, they must be picked immediately. In fact, some peach growers consider that there is exactly one day on which that fruit should be picked. It is almost impossible to find cheap labor which is willing to work for a short time unless there are industries nearby which employ the men of the families, but not the women and children. For that reason the met gardeners, who form a ring around practically all great cities, are able to engage in much more intensive cultivation than are the truck farmers who are farther from the labor supply. It must be remembered that intensive cultivation, like that which is so dominant in China and Japan, requires an immense ' amount of hand labor, but yields a large return from a small area; extensive cultivation, on the contrary, employs a relatively small 1 amount of human labor for it relies on horses or machines; it raises much per individual, but not so much as the intensive method per acre. The intensive method is essential when the population is dense but it always means that somewhere in the vicinity there is a considerable body of relatively poor people who furnish a cheap labor supply. The extensive method implies a much higher general level of comfort although it does not usually imply the existence of the small group of rich people who are generally the accompaniment of the poor people with their cheap labor.