Fly Loan

Pleased with themselves last week were officials of two Florida fruit cooperatives. Theirs was the distinction of receiving from the Federal Farm Board the first allotment from its $150,000,000 loan fund. To Florida United Growers and Florida Citrus Growers Exchange the Board advanced $300,000.

This loan was obtained to equip Florida fruit shipping warehouses with apparatus for destroying the Mediterranean fruit fly on outgoing produce. By this method fruit is first heated above 100DEG, then suddenly cooled to just above freezing where it is held long enough to insure the demise of Halterophera Capitata larvae.

Floridians last week insisted that the extermination of this pest was virtually complete, that Secretary of Agriculture Hyde should consider relaxing the federal quarantine. They accused their citrus-competitor, California, of exaggerating the fruit fly's destruction in Florida, of spreading false stories of fruit trees cut down, orchards obliterated.

P: The Federal Farm Board last week received applications for relief from growers of: mushrooms, plumosus,* grapes.

P: Wheat continued to engage the Board's attention. It repeated its warning to husbandmen to hold back their crop--a warning generally ignored.

* Hair fern used by florists in arranging and pack inn bouquets.