Committee can go to work.
Let's be realistic. We are not going to influence all the experiment
stations to do this work. It is not going to be practicable for them.
They probably would very much like to do it, but it's not in the
picture, as I see it now. Therefore, we are not going to wait, as our
forester would have us wait, until we breed one. Let's get these good
ones that we have got and cull them out so Dr. Crane can answer a letter
without having a guilty conscience.
DR. CRANE: That's right. Folks, I want to make one comment on Mr.
Chase's remarks--also Mr. Slate's remarks, about tying this work up to
the experiment stations. There is one thing that, in my experience, we
can't place too much dependence on. Of course, in the Department of
Agriculture our main interests that we are likely to contend with are
our four major nut industries in the country. That is pecans, Persian
walnuts, filberts and almonds. In the case of those, we can get very
little help from the experiment stations, with the possible exception of
California.
MR. CORSAN: There is lots of truth in that.
DR. CRANE: They haven't got the interest in it. They haven't got the
money, they haven't got the support. They depend more on the U. S.
Department of Agriculture. Well, the Department of Agriculture can't
carry it. Hence, it comes back to growers. The grower organizations,
even in the great state of California, with all their great wealth and
abundance, go to the California experiment stations more than to any
other experiment stations in the United States. But the commercial
growers out there have already set up organizations for the testing of
these varieties and for trial plantings. You can't come back to the
experiment stations and just as has been pointed out, many of the
experiment stations have only one or two or, at most, three different
kinds of nuts of their own. They have got to go out just the same as we
do ~with the growers~; we co-operate with them. And we have already got a
lot of these experimental plantings. There is Sterling Smith with--I
have forgotten how many he said--60 walnut varieties, and Mr. Shessler
with a hundred, there in Ohio.
I'd like to know from Sterling Smith and Mr. Shessler which are the best
five walnut varieties.
MR. KINTZEL: In that section?
DR. CRANE: In that section, that's what I want to know.
MR. CORSAN: That's what we are here for tonight. Let us talk it over.
MR. WEBER: Put the quest
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