AMERICAN APPLES AND CANNED FRUITS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9184, 13 October 1888, Page 5

AMERICAN APPLES AND CANNED FRUITS.

The shipment of apples from the United States to Europe began in 1845, when five barrels were shipped from Boston to Glasgow. The trade grew rapidly, and is now mainly carried on at Boston and New York, the latter city doing by far the larger parb of the entire trade. There is also an export of apples from Canada which is something like one-fifth of the entire export to Liverpool, at which port most of the fruit from this country and Canada is received. In ten years (1576-SG) the receipts of apples at Liverpool were about 3,500,000 bushels, of which Canada contributed 721,000 bushels. The exports of apples and of dried apples from the United States alone for the three last fiscal years, and for ten months of t.ba present (the liscal year ending with June), are as follows :— Apples, bu. Dried Apples, llv ISS4-5 .. 088,807 .. is,4i7,uo<i ISSS-H .. 744,539 .. 10,473,1100 1886-7 .. 6'J2,000 .. 8,0U0,000 10 mos. of ai-b .. 485,853 .. 11,192,995 The value of these apples was £1,226,545, and of the dried appies, £560,479. The value of the canned iruit exported in the same period was £447,699, an aggregate of more than £'2,200,000, to which may bo added a million and a quarter more for the item of "other green, ripe, or dried fruits. 1. These figures show an average of about £SOO,OOO a year in fruit export, or about one-thirteenth of the entire orchard product) as given by the census of 1880. This, as compared with the export returns of other crops, is a very favourable exhibit, and when the wonderful growth in exportation of apples to England—from live barrels in 1545 co more than seven hundred thousand forty years later—is considered, the promise of the future is very great. A London journal in February last noticed the increased demand for American and Canadian apples as ".simply astonishing," and as happening "season after season." and begged the home-grower to take the remedy in his own hands. It must not be forgotten that while the export trade in apples is large, it is regulated to a considerable extent by the proportions of the crop both in this country and in Europe. England pays other countries £8,000,000 a year for fruit) that can be raised on her own soil, and her established policy is to raise within her own area, home and colonial, every possible; product that the earth yields. Our exported orchard products, however, are by no means limited to the narrow iield of Great. Britain, although she is our largest customer. They are wanted in other countries of Europe, in ihc West Indies, and in Australasia. The dried apples go to six, the fresh apples to thirty-three, and the canned fruit to sixty-one of the seventyfour countries with which tho Unite rStates holds commercial relations. Last year Spain took one barrel of apples, and paid £1 for it. France took live at the cose of £4. " All other French possessions" had twentysix barrels for £'22 lb's. Cuba only received fifty pounds; of dried apples worth 10s, and Ecuador paid £1 12a for the same quantity. But small as is the trade in some of these benighted countries, it is growing elsewhere, and by and by they will all eaC American fruit, and rejoice in the opportunity to do so.—American Agriculturist.