CHAPTER XVIII
Cost of Production
There are a few vegetables or fruits where the cost of production and the price received are more variable than with the tomato. The cost per acre for raising the fruit varies with the conditions of soil, facilities for doing the work economically and with the season, while that of marketing the product varies still more. Under usual conditions, the growing of an acre of tomatoes and the gathering and marketing of the fruit will cost from $18 to $90, of which from 15 to 40 per cent. is spent in fertilizing and preparing the ground, 5 to 10 per cent. for plants, 20 to 30 per cent. for cultivation, and 25 to 40 per cent. for gathering and handling the fruit. The last item, of course, varies somewhat with, but not in proportion to, the amount of the crop, as it costs proportionately less to gather a large than a small crop, and for canners' use than for market.
The expense of shipping and marketing the crop varies so greatly according to the conditions and methods that I do not attempt to state the amount. The total yield of fruit runs from 200 to 600 or 700 bushels to the acre, a 200-bushel crop of tomatoes comparing as to amount with one of 25 bushels of wheat and a 700-bushel crop of tomatoes with one of 60 bushels of wheat; with the best and wisest cultivation and under the most favorable conditions one can as reasonably hope for one as for the other. Of this total yield, from 10 to 25 per cent. of the fruit should be such as, because of earliness and quality, can be sold as extras, and there is usually from 5 to 10 per cent., and sometimes a much larger per cent., which should be rejected as unsalable. The selected fruit should net from $1 to $5 a bushel, the common from 30 to 75 cents—making the returns for a 200-bushel yield well sold in a nearby market $70 to $350, and proportionately larger, for a better yield. In practice I have known of crops which gave a profit above expenses of over $1,000 an acre. This came, however, from exceptionally favorable conditions and skilled marketing, and I have known of many more crops where, though the fruit was equally large and well grown, the profit was less than $100.
In this country a greenhouse is seldom used solely for the growing of tomatoes, but other crops—such as lettuce—are grown in connection with the tomatoes, so that it is impracticable to give the cost of production. As grown at the Ohio state experiment station—and the crop ripened in late spring or early summer and sold on the market of smaller cities—greenhouse tomatoes have yielded about two pounds a square foot of glass and brought an average price of 12 cents per pound. In other cases yields as high as 10 pounds a foot of glass and an average price of 40 cents a pound have been reported.
CHAPTER XIX
Insects Injurious to the Tomato
By Dr. F. H. Chittenden
Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture