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Show Big Poultry Co. j Making History The vision of the founders of the Utah Poultry Producers cooperative, a marketing' organization just com-. pleting its third season of activity, that the egg and'poultry industry in Utah some day would be a $10,000,000 industry is this year. just one-fourth realized. It is estimated that the industry in-dustry this -year has meant $2,500, 000 to the state of Utah. This in-' eludes, of course, revenue from turkeys tur-keys and also labor paid at the various var-ious egg and poultry handling sta-, tions of the producers' cooperative and other agencies handling these products. ' ,i j Prior to the season of .1922 the ; state of Utah was importing eggs and j dressed poultry. This year, four sea-; sons later, the state is exporting in the. neighborhood of 370 carloads. In the summer of 1922 the Central Utah '. Poultry exchange was formed.,., at Gunnison by Benjamin Brown, who is rrow president of the greater state or- ' ganization.Mr. Brown organized. whaT1-proved whaT1-proved to be the nucleus of the present pres-ent producers' cooperative to find a market for the eggs of Gunnison Val-ely Val-ely farmers.' At. the time Mr. Brown j saw the need for such a , :iinit, the j farmers in that valley ., :we.re selling theiir eggs for eight and- ten cents per dozen. The need for a marketing association that ' would ' remove the . surplus and stabilize the market ', hearer a point where the producer could be assured a fair return on his product became apparent, for it' was realized that at eight to ten cents he could not meet expenses. j That first yeair, though on a small scale, the ' marketing group found it could express Utah eggs to Los Angeles Ange-les and return to the producer approx- j imately Ten cents a dozen more than ; they could anticipate otherwise. News of this spread rapidly and soon Sevier Sev-ier county and other nearby producing produc-ing sections asked to. be allied, with the movement. That first year 17 cars of eges were exported, but late in the j fall the operators found they had j overclone the exporting and it was necessary to brine1 back 7 carloads. Thus the first year on an export basis bas-is Utah supplied 10 carloads of produce. pro-duce. In the spring of 1923 the Utah State Farm bureau saw an opportun-j ity to make the poultry cooperative stateswide in its scope, and in March I final expansion was effected. The export ex-port movement in 1923 was 225 car- loads. In 1924 it increased to 356 car- J loads, and this year's movement is about the same as that of last year. In noirmal years Utah ships out from 10 to 15 carloads of turkeys and from 15 to 20 carloads of live and dressed poultry. 4 This year has not brought tangible tangi-ble evidence of an increase over last year, but the poulbrymen added this spring approximately 1,000,000 baby chicks to their flocks. These additions will be felt in production records next year. The opinion of President Benjamin Brown of the cooperative is that the eeg industry in Utah has every opportunity op-portunity to expand to a point where it will mean an annual turnover of $10,000,000' to the farmers of the state. |