Apples for Market
SIR.—Mr. Massingham touches on a perennial problem which ought to be investigated thoroughly, when he writes of a Herefordshire farmer selling " impeccable dessert apples and pears " for cider-making at a penny a pound. It is implied that this is because of the competition of foreign fruit imports.
Every year it is said that English fruit-growers have wonderful fruit that they cannot sell. Indeed it is true. And yet, if you look in the ordinary greengrocer's shop for English fruit, what do you find? You find horrid little unripe pockmarked apples, Victoria plums that are green not red, undersized pears that ought to have been thrown to the pigs. When I ask the shopman why we are offered this undergrown, unripe stuff, he says vaguely that it is because of the transport. But that does not explain why fruit is gathered and marketed in such conditions. My own opinion is that some growers in greed for first prices, and indifferent to the public, flood the market at the start of the season with this pig- food, and spoil the chances of other growers with good fruit to sell. There are indeed eatable English dessert apples in the shops now, but where were they a month ago or more? And how many growers are holding back now in the hope of getting a higher price at Christmas?
I am afraid that shutting out foreign imports will-only result in more windfalls and other such fruit being sent to market, unless the growers and salesmen come to some better understanding, and have better regard
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