OCR Text |
Show Beet Situation Reaches Crucial Point( GUNNISCN VALLEY'S MOST IMPORTANT INDUSTRY AND THE PROSPERITY OF THE ENTIRE SECTION WILL BE ENDANGERED IF FARMERS FAIL TO CONTRACT SUFFICIENT SUF-FICIENT ACREAGE TO INSURE FACTORY OPERATION. Will the beet growers of the Great Gunnison Valley keep the Gunnison Sugar factory going, by getting) in and' supporting one of the great and only sustaining industries here by growing sufficient beets to make it worth while for the factory to operate, or will they lay down and crush an industry which is endeavoring to make property prop-erty more valuable, furnish more employment for men, boys and girls; and will they be the cause of a depreciation of land values that went by leaps and bounds when the factory was erected? This is the vital question that is agitating the more conservative beet grower and the business men of; this section. With the attempt to secure the acreage, sufficient to run the factory during the coming fall, difficulty is being encountered by the field men employed by the sugar company, and the situation has reached the crucial point if sufficient beets are not obtainable the factory, will be closed down and operations will cease from every view point. Closing down- the factory would mean the wrecking, first of the greatest industry the valley has ever had. Second the nulling' of approximately $600,000 annually which is spent for beets, labor, maintenance, etc. Third the reducing of land values of approximately 50 per cent. Fourth it will drive out many residents, who will be effected as the resull of the factory closing and the resulting stagnation of general business busi-ness conditions: While it is admitted the growers of beets throughout the val ley have had a strenuous time since the industry has started, they have all profited to a degree, indirectly,' if not directly. But wil the growers stop and consider that the factory and the beet grow ing industry is yet in the experimental stage? Since the factory was erected some eight years ago, it has been a struggle. In their infancy all big industries have the same struggle and many die before reaching reach-ing the self-sustaining stage. The management of the local factory, fighting against fate, has maintained the plant and taken the yearly losses. But .it is willing to go ahead and claim success rather thar defeat, and this can only be done throught the united support of pvtv rfrl-blnoded and loval. boostinsr home-builder in the valley It might be well to make compari-' sons of the sections maintaining beet sugar mills and those without. Through the distribution of hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result of the factories, you will always find prosperity, much more there than those who have no factories. Another good illustration why the local farmers farm-ers should plant all available ground to beets and support our own institution, institu-tion, can be made of other places where factories have been forced to close as the result of non-support. Where factories once operated and were forced to leave, land values have gone to- less than half. Business has stagnated and .farm commodities are lessened in price and farmers were forced out of business through foreclosures, fore-closures, for the reasons that loans could not be secured on wheat and farm crops other than beets. That the conditions here are becoming be-coming better and better each year, is shown by the progress the growers are making as they advance in the art of growing beets. With the starting of the factory eight -years ago the average yield .to the acre was between seven and eight tons. Last year for the 4500 acres grown the average yield was close to 14 tons per acre. Conditions as to the price of sugar, it must be admitted, have been all but encouraging to the grower. But these conditions cannot and will not last forever. . Another good illustration why the local growers should plant beets instead in-stead of wheat: The 4500 acres of sugar beets harvested last year yielding over 61,000 tons at $6 pe" ton, brought to the farmers nearly $375,000. Planting wheat on the 450C acres and allowing the high average of 30 bushels per acre, and selling the wheat at $1 per bushel, means a re- turn of $135,000 for the wheat crop, -or nearly $240,000 less than if beets had been planted. The planted beet crop is the crop which will secm-e your loans. The wheat crop, with an uncertainty of price, is a poor asset for borrowing. Broad minded beet growers are seeing see-ing the doom that would befall them ! by the closing of the factory. They sense the disaster that would follow and for this reason a willingness of some has been shown to increase acreage acre-age to that which they had already contracted. It is to be hoped by all that the light will be seen and that instead of the factory employes goinp out and soliciting the acreage that will make possible the sustaining of the factory, that the growers will seek the factory employes and sign a sufficient acreage that will keep the mill wheels grinding for a solid four months. DON'T BUST THE VALLEY. YOURSELF AND OTHERS PLANT j BEETS AND ENJOY PROSPERITY. |