“This fact,” Mr. Peet explained, “we put to work as the reason for doing something to benefit the fruit industry.  What could be done?  The answer in other highly specialized fruit sections seems to have been central packing houses.  We held a meeting, inviting one very influential fruit grower from each loading station in the county.  We showed charts of the farm-management records.  It didn’t take long for the meeting to go on record as favoring the central-packing-house plan.

“Later meetings were held in each community, the farm-management charts were again shown, and at every loading station the meetings went on record as favoring central packing houses.  To make a long story short, sites and methods of financing these houses were worked 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 makes the rules and regulations under which the fruit is packed.

“From the very beginning the proposition has been pushed not as a means of beating the selling game by selling cooeperatively, but as a means of securing the confidence of the consuming public, which must ultimately result in a wider distribution and better prices.  In fact, the matter of selling has not been fostered from the farm-bureau office.  We have concerned ourselves solely with uniform grading and central packing.  We believed from the start that the selling of properly graded and packed fruit will take care of itself, and this stand has been justified.

“Each association makes its own arrangements for selling, and in every case has secured better prices than the growers who sold under the old system.  The most satisfactory feature of this work centers round the fact that the best and most influential growers are heart and soul behind the proposition.  The personnel of cooeperative movements, I believe, is the main feature.”

When I visited Niagara 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 communities in Niagara and in other counties were writing in for details of the plan, to the end of getting the same thing started in their sections.  And inquiries were coming in from states outside of New York.

Even with the best of selling methods, no commodity will bring a 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 came to Manager Peet’s attention early in 1917 that the farm bureau had a golden 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.