Part 38 (1/2)

This observation is dated 1914, one year after leading farmers and business men of the county, convinced that all was not so ith theures would have one believe, made the move to set up and operate for the county a farm bureau New York is the national hotbed of faranda

Aluration of this bureau, I went into Niagara County And before I left I was able to sketch a rather vivid mental picture of what a farm bureau really can do for a county, be the raw ood, bad or indifferent

Up in the office of the Niagara County Farm Bureau at Lockport I waited soer, Nelson R Peet That as an eye-opener

Three woer occupied this roo to typewrite, answer the continuous ringing of the phone, respond to buzzer suer Peet's private office and talk with a stream of visitors, all at the saht in these offices and not once save at night was there a let-up in this sort of thing It was business all the ti the bureau

Nelson Peet, neto His speech and his y; his enthusias e of y of service, he never wastes a eara County far rush seasons

This man has been with the bureau three years When he came to it the bureau had a paid-up ara County, thedaily It led by a good in, I was told, the fifty-five New York county farm bureaus These, in 1918, had a total membershi+p of 60,000

More than half the farara Bureau

When Peet first took charge there were two broad courses open to hianda in behalf of the farra about cooperation and community interests, better economics and better social conditions, but too often results in the propagandist doing the ”coing,” while the ”operating” is left to somebody else

The other course was to find out what the farms and farmers in the county needed s Peet chose the latter course And in so doing he has staged one of the best demonstrations in rural America He has shown that a farm bureau can be made into a county service station and actually becoricultural activities

With the aid of state-college men, one of Peet's fore inventories of the farara County For four years these records have been taken on soularly held at the homes of the bureau's community co, the farmers assemble Here they work out their own labor incohbors The farm bureau helps the men make these business analyses--it does not do the work for them

Now the farmers ask for the blank forement records as the ures serve the bureau as an index to the county's progress

More than once Peet has referred to theed For exae labor inco 1916

”This fact,” Mr Peet explained, ”we put to work as the reason for doing so to benefit the fruit industry What could be done? The answer in other highly specialized fruit sections see, inviting one very influential fruit grower fro station in the county We showed charts of the faro on record as favoring the central-packing-house plan

”Later e station thehouses Tothese houses orked out There were already two old central packing houses in operation They took on new life Five new ones have been formed All were incorporated and federated into a central parent association, which owns the brand adopted and ulations under which the fruit is packed

”Fro the proposition has been pushed not as acooperatively, but as apublic, which must ultimately result in a wider distribution and better prices In fact, thehas not been fostered from the farm-bureau office We have concerned ourselves solely with unifor We believed froraded and packed fruit will take care of itself, and this stand has been justified

”Each association , and in every case has secured better prices than the groho sold under the old system The most satisfactory feature of this work centers round the fact that the best and rowers are heart and soul behind the proposition The personnel of cooperative movements, I believe, is the ara County the seven central packing associations were doing a splendid business, handling about 1,000,000 worth of apples between them Only two of the associations were more than one year old Many of the associations were dickering for additional space for packing and for extensions for their refrigerator service Other co in for details of the plan, to the end of getting the sa in from states outside of New York

Even with the best of sellinga profit to the producer unless the greater portion of it is eligible to the A-1 class Too many seconds or culls will throw any orchard venture on the rocks of bankruptcy It caer Peet's attention early in 1917 that the farolden opportunity to put on another service, which alone, if it worked out in practice as well as it did on paper, would justify the existence of the bureau

He noticed that though orchardists were following spraying schedules--the best they could find--so apple scab and other pests, but others got results ranging between indifferent and poor This seemed paradoxical, in view of the fact that one hbor would have more scabby apples than the other

At that time LF Strickland, orchard inspector for the state departriculture, had paid particular attention to a liara County with a view to controlling scab by spraying He discovered that, though the average spraying calendar is all right, climatic conditions in different parts of the same county often upset these standard calculations, so that a difference of one day or even a few hours in ti often meant the difference between success and failure In other words, it was necessary to study all contributing factors, watch the orchards unrely and then decide on the exact day or even hour when conditions were right for a successful spray treatment He found that one et the optimum of results