The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, November 3, 1919, Page 8

LR ‘through the screen. He must take the " problems are. . efficient for the farmer is the farmer Making Potatoes Pay—A Serious Job Real Market Can Be Developed Through State-Owned Market F acilities— Profitable Uses for Culls Essentiai—Meat Packing Trust Must Go BY A. B. GILBERT HEN potatoes fell to $1.50 a hundredweight at many coun- try loading points in Minnesota a few weeks ago, we were again forcibly reminded of the unfair- ness and inefficiency in market- ing this crop. Dairy farmers, grain farmers and stock rais- ers are badly used in the mar- ket, but the situation of the potato farmer is worse. A more perishable product contributes to the dif-". ficulties. These potatoes which the farmers were selling for'$1.50 a hundredweight probably cost the grower more than that sum if he considers his ‘own labor and interest on his investment, and a good deal more if he takes into consideration the amount of potatoes per acre which are under grade. The potatoes for which the farmer in Minnesota gets $1.50 a hundredweight, or about 90 cents a bushel, sell at retail in St. Paul for $1.89 to over $2 a bushel. Thus the farmer gets about half the retail price in the near market. General _experi- ence will show the farmer as getting 50 to 58 per cent of what™ the consumer pays. For potatoes raised within 100 miles of St. Paul or any other large market the distribution of the. consumer’s dollar spent for potatoes will run about as follows: Farmer, 50 to 58 cents; retailer, 8.4 cents; rail- road, 5 cents; wholesale handlers, 28.6 to 36.6 cents. To this problem of the wide gap between pro- ducer and consumer we must add one other—the problem of grading. Grading may give the farmer a better price for what he does sell, but a good deal of his crop can not be readiily sold because it goes undersize potatoes home for such use as he can find for them, or he some- times can sell them at low prices to . potato-reducing plants. Also the grad- ing is in the hands of the buyers and this exposes the farmers to abuses aris- ing from the fact. The screens used may be beyond lawful size. The buyer may take only No. 1 and throw the No. 2 back on the farmer. g It is part of good business for the farmer to look for solutions for these two problems. There are solutions if ‘the farmers are willing to go after the matter with methods as serious as the The causes are in part those naturally existing in an undevel-. oped industry such as potato raising and marketing in this country is, and in part speculation dominated by a few strong interests. The potato market has been built up without thought or plan other than the desire of produce handlers to get the maximum profit. Doing only what profit dictated they have naturally fail- ed to build up an efficient market for the farmer. The only man who can_be himself, through organization. Farm- ers are just beginning to organize thor- oughly. Consequently we can say that the potato market is undeveloped, al- though we have raised potatoes here since the first colonists landed. STATE WAREHOUSES ARE ESSENTIAL What can we do to develop it? Load- ing-station work should be in the hands of men representing the farmers. Co-" operative employes or the employes of a state system of local warehouses should do the work. The state system of local warehouses proposed by the Nonpartisan league would offer the cheapest warehouse service for pota- toes because it would be run in con- s We next come to the terminal market. At this place the potatoes should be received by an _agent friendly, rather than is now the case, hostile to the farmer. A state-owned terminal plant is need- ed. Then instead of being unmercifully docked for damage in transit, for dirt and for a few natural imperfections, the farmer would have his potatoes put in shape for the market. They would be clean- ed and otherwise prepared for the buyer’s eyes at cost, and would still belong to the farmer or to the farmers’ association. Storage with loans on receipts would enable the growers to hold off the market when they want to wait for a better price. These state-owned terminal facilities would be * of special service to the farmers operating without the aid of local potato-handling equipment. Such a farmer’s car would be cleaned and graded for him and the culls disposed of to plants for develop- ing by-products, such as starch and alcohol. With such a terminal plant in each large center in our northwestern states and with the state guar- antee of grade and quality, there would be no need of-middlemen between the farmer and the retailer. A retailer would then know that what he ordered “sight unseen” he would get. This terminal also takes care of another phase of the marketing problem which many overlook. Our potato growers cut their own market by ship- ping to Chicago rather than to the consuming mar- ket. Chicago produce men encourage this, for it gives them .a glutted market where they can buy cheap. Chicago then ships much of these potatoes back in the direction from which they came. There DIGGING POTATOES BY MACINERY is the extra freight bill which the consumer and the producer must divide between them and there is the depressing effect of the Chicago price on all other centers. Y The one-market-center evil seems to grow; worse every year. On September 15 of this year 149 cars of potatoes were received.in Chicago. On the same date a year ago the number was 82, The normal daily receipts in the big marketing season used to be 50 to 60 cars. Let us remember also that this year the crop for the whole country is 141,000,000 bushels under that of last year. * With good state-owned terminals in every large center, as the League proposes, potatoes would be sent directly to the point where they are to be consumed, and not to this point by way of Chicago or New York City. Even buyers for foreign coun- tries would turn to markets nearer the farmer. PROFITABLE USES i FOR THE CULLS i That part of the grading problem which remains after we have cleaned the market of the evils of nonfarmer control, is probably more diffitult than the working out of what has been proposed up to this point. Grading appears to be essential for good marketing. Yet grading is a big burden on the growers. The reason is the undeveloped con- dition of the potato industry as noted above. We started grading without preparation. We asked farmers to prepare at once to make profitable use of their culls and they were unable to do so. Before the war Germany used to raise over a billion bushels of potatoes and less than half of these were used for human food. Germany had solved the cull problem and made potatoes profitable for the farmers, as is indicated by the fact that more than twice our total produc- tion was reached on a. farming area smaller- than our state of Texas. In- dustries were developed to make starch, flour, alcohol and other products from the culls. Experts worked out the problems of making potatoes good food for hogs and livestock and instructed the farmers. And the much-talked-of autocratic Germany did not have a packing trust to rob the farmer of the stock he thus raised. The slaughtering was done -in local slaughtering plants, of which there were over 1,000 in that small country. And there were over 100 gentral live- stock markets. Denmark and Holland have done likewise. Danish farmgrs have made a special success in reaching foreign markets with their meat prod- ucts by co-operation. Other European countries work in the ‘same directi_on. It is evident, not only from foreign experience but from study of the facts here, that the potato problem is not solvable by itself. We must solve other farm-marketing problems at the same time to use the by-products of potatoes, most important of which is market.ing of livestock. With better farm prices for livestock, farmers will find it worth while not only to raise the present quantity of potatoes and to increa§e their herds to use the culls, but will raise larger amounts of potatoes than now, as Germany has been doing. Other things being equal practically no other food crop yields as large an .amount -of food per acre as potatoes. The Minnesota soil, which gives the farmer. 14 bushels of wheat and 32.6 bushels of corn to the acre, will give him 100 bushels of potatoes. Potatoes more than make up in quantity what they lack in quality. The introduction of the potato into Ireland, a country which had previously lived on grains, enabled it to double in population in the nection with warehousing other prod- ucts and cold storage plants, and prob- ably the grain elevator. It makes co- operative potato work easier, too, be- cause with warehouse service perform- ! . ed at cost the co-operative potato asso- ciation would not have to find the capi- tal for the plant. 3 We are foremost among the nations of the ear to aid in production. countries in methods of marketing. -Our people fail in marketing, not. be- cause they are more ignorant, but because their natural ingenuity is re- pressed in this field by. great vested interests which have both industrial and political power. The Nonpartisan Jeague farmers believe that we must use political power, state ownership and co-operation to remove this incubus. We can then become efficient in marketing. PAGE EIGHT th in inventing machinery But somehow we can’t keep pace with many other 40 -years following 1800. Then came the famine—a potato famine—which brought the great immigration of the Irish to our shores. With the proper solutions for the problems:of disposing” of potatoes, we shall in time do much to help the farm- er use high-priced land profitably.