Factors affecting California raisin sales and prices, 1922-1929

Abstract does not appear. First page follows.

At what price can the tonnage of California raisins available during any particular marketing season be sold? As important as this question obviously is to those producing and marketing California raisins, many of the basic data needed in its solution were unavailable until July, 1930. At that time, however, through the cooperation of the members of the Dried Fruit Association of California, the independent packers of the state, and the Sun-Maid Raisin Growers Association, records of the quantities of California raisins sold for the crop years 1921-1929 and of the actual f.o.b. prices received were made available to the Giannini Foundation. Together with other more readily available information these data have been used as the basis of the present attempt to discover and measure the influence of the factors that have determined the quantities of California raisins sold annually in the domestic and in the overseas markets during the last eight marketing seasons, 1922-1929.

Although the analysis explains only what has occurred in the past, much of its value obviously lies in the help it can give the industry in judging the price at which any given tonnage may be expected to sell during any given crop year in the future. In fact, the specific reason for undertaking the study in the spring of 1930 was to make available a better basis for such judgment in the proposed control program of the industry.