CANTERBURY AND FRUITGROWING.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19622, 18 May 1929, Page 21

CANTERBURY AND FRUITGROWING.

TO THE KDITOH CF THE PRESS. gi rj —My attention was drawn today to the statements made by the Mayor of Motueka, especially so to the statement that Eve acres W**°£ £2IOO worth of apples, or LUt) per acre. Even the iid^ A the Yankee never reached so high a figure It is evident that the Mayor thought our Canterbury farmers were a green lot. Mayors of towns and cities are becoming famous for romancing. The State of Washington, USA, is the largest producer ot apples in the world—that is, for one State But the fruit growers at Washington or Oregon never even dreamt of such a return. Just fancy, two thousand dollars per acre! Ihe U.S.A. would not be large enough to hold them. If the Nelson orchardists produced half the apples represented by the two thousand one hundred pounds, they would be exporting millions of cases, and there would be no gunrantee wanted. _ The fact of the matter is that Auckland, Hawke's Bay, Nelson, and Otago pride themselves on growing all the fruit, and Canterbury, where there is a very large acreage of commercial orchards', does not count. The writer reads what journals there are on frx.it-growing, but it is very rare that Canterbury is in the limelight. I have no hesitation in saying that Can-terburv-grown fruit is superior in flavour to that from any other part of the Dominion. I hnve customers in a large part of the Island, and we even send apples up to the Nortli Island, and I tnke my customers' word for what I have stated. The Fruitgrowers' Association of the other provinces never tire of lauding their products and trying to push their produce to the front. While the Canterbury fruit-growers and the branches pass their time in proposing; remits or squabbling about more Customs duty on tomatoes, etc., instead of pushing their products and seeing that their presence has a plnce in tht> mn. The farmers are just as bad. They have the finest province in the Dominion nnd do not seem to know it. I have been over 16 years in Canterbury now, =o clim to be a Canterbury man, and I certainly am not going "to see my province take a back seat.—Yours, etc., GEORGE LEE. Tempi-ton, May 16th.