ENCOURAGING SMALL FARMER.
Beginning January 5, The Advertiser will publish a weekly list of wholesale prices for Island produce in Honolulu markets while A. T. Longley, superintendent of the home markets division of the Hawaii Experiment Station will also supply a weekly market letter for publication. The marketing division was authorized by the last legislature, an appropriation having been made for the purpose.
Dr. E. V. Wilcox has been a close student of cooperative marketing organizations for the last twenty years. He stated to The Advertiser Saturday that there are ten times as many cooperative marketing organizations in the United States as in England and Germany combined, although there is very little American literature on the subject. One Southern farmer’s organization that both sells produce and purchases machinery, fertilizers, seed and supplies for its members includes over three million farmers and planters. California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Utah and Colorado have their fruit marketing organizations. In the Central States the farmers have to together on their corn, wheat and oat crops as well on the scores of minor products usually associated in the Hawaiian public mind with “small farming.” There are cooperative societies in New York and New England; in Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas they united in the marketing of tobacco, early truck crops, peach and berry crops; and in the Gulf States they are almost a controlling factor in cotton.
The prime objects of farmer’s cooperative unions are, continuity of supply, an honest and uniform pack, and standardization of grades. The idea is to put the growing, packing and marketing of farm produce on a business basis.
nupepa 