The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1923-04-26
POOL TO Sell
POTATO CROP
Growers in N. Y. and II Other
States to Market Through
Central Body.
PLAN TO EQUALlZE PRICES
350,o0o,ooo Bushels Yield Forecast This
Season to Be Distributed Under Co.
, operative Method - Conditions
Forced Them to Act.

New York.-The farmers of the
United States are about to undertake
the cooperative marketing of the
country's largest food crop, in num-
Der of pounds consumed
With the organization of the Maine
Potato Growers Cooperative Associa-
ton just completed, there has been
taken the first step in marketing the
nations 100000, OOO-bushel potato crop
entirely through farmers cooperative
selling organizations commonly di-
rected and controlled by one central
body
Sixty per cent of the farmers who
grow Names great crop of tubers al
ready have accepted membership and
signed contracts with the Maine asso-
citation. They have agreed to send
every bushel raised on their farms to
the warehouses of the association for
sale by it. A group of potato grow
ers met in Rochester a few days ago
and undertook the organization of a
similar cooperative association among
the farmers of New York State The
active work Of organization will begin
after the present growing season and
the association is expected to be ready
to begin selling by the time the 1924
crop is out of the ground.
With the 1924 crop it is also ex-
pected that associations modelled on
the same lines will be ready to func-
ton in New Jersey, Virginia, Minneso-
ia, Michigan, Wisconsin, North and
South Dakota, Idaho, Colorado and
Utah
All of these growers cooperative
associations will be linked up in
central body, which will direct the
sales policy, the details of marketing,
regulate the flow of the potatoes to
market and designate the markets to
which they are to go and generally
control the distribution so as to equal
ize prices and conditions everywhere
as protection, for the farmer.
The Maine association and the
groups being organized in other pota-
to producing states are all modelled
after the Sapiro plan on which SINH
lar cooperation in tobacco, cotton,
rice and other lines of farm produce
have been built during the last two
or three years. Their object is, of
course, to increase the return on his
crop to the farmer but as Aaron Sa-
piro, organizer Of the California Fruit
Exchange and father of the plan ex-
planned not necessarily at the ex-
pense of the consumer. The specu-
lators and middlemen are the especial
targets of the CO-operatives.
1t was TO Mr.. Sapiro's office here
that G, Herbert Foss, secretary Of the
Maine Association and Edward W
Martin, county agent of Aroostock
County, came with word that the or
ganization had already signed up sixty
per cent of the potato farmers in that
state. They described the conditions
which had brought the conservative
Down casters" into the new COOP
erative scheme, conditions which are
said to be typical of the situation in
WHICH me potato farmers throughout
the country have found themselves
during the last three years and which
have forced them to look about for
some way out.
Like growers everywhere, the Maine
farmers found themselves unable to
grow sufficiently large crops to supply
the demand during the war years and
the year Immediately following the
armistice. Potatoes kept mounting in
price until in 1919 they were selling
for IS and SO barrel on the farm
and the wholesalers were getting SIS
and $50 barrel in New York and
other large Eastern cities. There was
a good profit to be made in growing
potatoes at that price, a very good
profit, and more acreage was planted
So the 1919 crop, instead of producing
the average yield for the state of
between 20,000,OOO and $4,000 900
bushels actually jumped to about 81
100000 bushels