I expect as you do that there will be no need of much room for the convention. The fact is that without any commercial nut planting in the territory covered by the Northern Nut Growers Association it is remarkable that there has been as much interest as there is. I happen to know that the southern pecan (National) Association was kept going by the nurseries down there for a good many years, or largely by them, and without the commercial planting of the pecan there I do not think the Association would have kept going very long even if it had been founded.
I believe eventually there will be some interest in commercial planting north but it will go pretty slow and be after our time I judge. In commercial planting I mean plantings of not less than ten acres. I occasionally sell orders of 50 and even 100 trees, but they are usually scattered as to kinds and varieties of nuts and evidently designed to test out on a fair scale the merits of the different nuts. A man was here a few days ago and gave me an order for nearly a hundred black walnut trees. He has been planting for several years, starting with a half dozen trees three or four years ago and reports the trees doing fine. I presume you could call his planting this year a small commercial planting as that is what he has in mind.
The boom in planting fruit trees has taken some interest away from nut planting and this will continue as long as fruit is selling well.
From T. C. Tucker, Sail Francisco, Ca.:
Your program for the approaching meeting of the Northern Nut Growers Association, which has just reached me, is a most interesting one. It is with regret that I find I shall not be able to be with you. This is shipping season for the California Almond Industry and my presence here at this time is imperative.
While through the California Almond Growers Exchange I have for some time been a member of the Northern Nut Growers Association, I have not as yet had the pleasure of meeting with you, but I want to extend you a cordial invitation to visit California and I hope that at some future date a convention of the Northern Nut Growers Association will be held in this state. Here, as nut growers, you will find much of interest. This is the only state in the Union producing almonds commercially. Our 1919 crop was worth approximately $4,000,000.00 and represented 7000 tons of nuts. Here in this state we also produce the California Walnuts which in 1919 brought a return of approximately $20,000,000.00. Both of these industries are in their infancy, particularly is this true of the almond. It is estimated that there are 100,000 acres in California planted to almonds, the major portion of which is non-bearing.
We are now preparing for the future through an energetic sales campaign and by making plans for manufacturing by using almonds in new and attractive preparations. In 1919, the California Almond Growers Exchange, a non-profit association of 3800 farmers, spent approximately $208,000.00 for National Advertising and the expenditure in 1910 will exceed a quarter of a million dollars. This is done not only to sell the crops of 1919 and 1920 advantageously, but to educate the consumer up to the high food value of the almond and incidentally to lay a substantial foundation for future business.
We believe that the outlook for the California Almond is promising, but it is only as promising as the growers co-operate to that end. We believe that by a strong association of growers, quality and grades can be improved, distribution widened and the public made acquainted with the value of our product through the medium of our advertising.
We are also taking up at this time the cultural question endeavoring to eliminate the undesirable varieties and improve those which are commercially profitable.
We have some eighty odd varieties of almonds in this state, many of which are not known commercially. You will thus see that we have quite a problem in cultural lines.