Cultivation and Export of Netherlands Fruit

Abstract

]D UTRING recent decades world cultivation of fruit has undergone a great change; economic improvements have created higher standards of living and consequently greater demand for fruit. Cultivation of fruit as an occupation supplementary to farming, goes back very many years, but not until late years has it succeeded in gaining a place coordinate to other food-producing trades. Cultivated fruit plants are mentioned in records from ancient Greece and Egypt, and it has been proved that f ruit was also grown by the lacustral dwellers in middle Europe. In the modern sense of the word, however, the cultivation of fruit is a comparatively new thing in northwest Europe. In the Netherlands the peasant in early medieval ages fenced a piece of ground for food producing plants; the Dutch word for garden, tuin originally meant the hurdle of twigs round the garden. Around monasteries and manor houses decorative plants were chiefly grown, but fruit gardens were likewise of importance. They increased in number in the flourishing period of the Netherlands, especially about the towns, and thence spread to places whence fruit could be carried to the towns by waterways. The Netherlands are particularly adapted to cultivation of fruit for two reasons: the equable marine climate, and the power of regulating the subsoil water level. At first everything was grown on cold soil, and hotbeds were used to a small extent for grapes and early fruits; but as demand for early fruit increased hothouses were built. From primitive cultivation orcharding became an economically well-organized industry. The old boomgaard which produced only secondand third-class fruit, fit for cooking, was now replaced by a more modern form, the fruittuin, the fruit plantation, aiming at the production of firstclass table fruit. In the boomgaard people hardly knew what sort of fruit would result when a tree was planted. Nowadays the variety is definitely known and the quality of the soil and the depth of the subsoil water is carefully examined beforehand; and a sheltering belt, often of pear trees, is planted. The cultivation of fruit increases from year to year, not least that grown under glass. About 75,000 ha. of Dutch land are used for gardening, and of these more than 35,000 ha. are for fruit. The causes of this increase must be sought in: (1) improved methods of regulating the subsoil water level, (2) the development of communications with foreign countries, especially with England and Germany, (3) an increasing demand from abroad owing to the growth of the towns, (4) better instruction as to growing only the few sorts of fruit for which the demand is greatest, spraying the trees, and better grading and packing of fruit. Yet there seems to be little progress toward improving apples and pears, in spite of the endeavors of the government and the unions. A fifth point. the question of organization, will be mentioned later. The horticulture of the Netherlands may be divided according to products into: (1 ) cultivation of vegetables, (2) cultivation of fruit, (3) nurseries, (4) growing of flowers, and (5) growing flower bulbs. The phases are gener-