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Show SUGAR BEETS I Edited by Prof J. C. Hogenson. A NATION HUNGRY FOR SUGAR Uncle Sam luas a big sweet tooth. We Yankees consume nearly four hundred thousand tons of beet sugar every year, and still arc hungry enough to 1wy three million tons more from Europe. This is not all beet isugar, but it is sugar and costs millions. Wc lioive sixty-seven sugar-beet factories working three months cach year, grinding, boiling, and squeezing the sugar out of nearly forty thousand tons of beets every working day, but this docs not near fill our wants. These facts arc encouraging to bect-growcrs bect-growcrs or ought to be. The first refined beet-root sugar produced in commercial quantity was made about one hundred years ago, r.t a cost of approximately 80 cents a pourtd The cost of producing cane sugar wais then somewhat higher than that of beet sugar. The amount of raw sugar -extracted from the beet at that time varied from 4 to 6 per cent, and the amount of refined re-fined sugar obtained was from 1 to 2 per cent of the weight of the beet. The cost of producing an acre of beets was estimated at approximately $35 while 'he yield was from 6 to 25 tons per acre. The advance that have been made in cultural methods have been offset to a very great extent Iby the increased in-creased cost of labor in the United States, so that the actual reduction in the cost of producing beet sugar has been due to the improvement of the beet or to less expensive operations an extracting and refining the product. Thorough cultivation is another factor in producing good sugar beets. It is a common saying among the Germans that "the sugar must be hoed into the beet." In no time of its life should a sugar beet be allowed to stop growing, for if it once becomes stunted it is doubtful doubt-ful whether it will ever make as good a beet as it would have been under conditions of continuous growth. Another wr the beet has been improved im-proved is by increasing its sugar content". con-tent". This has been done without increasing in-creasing the 6ize of the (beet. " If a largely increased yield of beets j is combined with a much higher sug- I ar content it is entirely possible to obtain three times as much sugar per I acre as is produced on an average at the present time. Yields of more than 30 tons of beets per acre arc sometimes obtained, and t yield's of more than 20 tons arc common. com-mon. From 20 to 25 per cent of the sugar 1 an the beet has been reported so frc- qucntly that it is safe to assume that nn average sugar content of 18 per cent is within the limits of possibility. If an average yield of 20 tons per j acre and an average sugar content of ! 18 per cent could be reached, wc would have an average yield of 7,200 ipounds of sugar per acre. Clay loams arc very satisfactory for sugar-beet production, provided oth- cr conditions arc favorable; but more depends upon the physical condition of the soil and upon methods of cul- j tivation than upon the particular kind j or variety of soil used. The soil, however, should be well supplied with humus and well drained. During the past few years there has been a remarkaible advance an the price of farming land's, especially in L those localities where Ibcct-sugar fac- t torics arc in successful operation. Five years ago the land in Cache Valley, Utah, was offered for sale at i $20 an acre. Since that time two sug- 1 ar factories have, been built and from y 10,000 to 12,000 acres of sugar beets ',! arc grown in that valley annually,' bringing to the owners oi return of j $75 and upward per acre. As a result practically none of the land is for sale at the present time. If by force of circumistances a tract of this land changes hands, the price paid b more than $100 per acre. In some parts of Colorado sugar beets, potatoes and alfalfa form oi ro- I tation series to which small grains are sometimes added. When it ia realized that potatoes often yield from 600 to 800 bushels per acre, oind sugar beets upward of 20 tons per acre, it b not surprising that this land is held at several hun- . drcd dollars per acre. The production of single-germ beet ' seed is but a method of ,thinmng betts i before the seed is planted. 'Commer- j - cial beet seed consists for the most part of from two to seven individual sccds-wcldcd by nature into one mass. It is evident that plants .produced from such ai -mass of seeds must of necessity be very close together, and thus far no mechanism has been devised de-vised whereby the plants can fcc properly pro-perly thinned. Thus hankS labor has to be resorted to. Repeated effort have been made to break up the seed balls by passing them through various forms of rollers, rol-lers, but the seed coats arc so hard that any device that has been tried not only breaks the coats but likewise like-wise the seed balls, thus destroying the germ. J The department of agriculture has been more successful in this Jinc by its efforts to produce a. single germ seed, and its scientists have within the past year increased the production produc-tion of single-germ seed from 2 to 25 per cent; and in the light of the advance ad-vance that has already been made it is reasonably safe to assume that this object will finally be accomplished by this -means. There is now some $60,000,000 invested in-vested in beet sugar farms and factories fac-tories in the United States. Every new factory gives the growers better facilities for disposing of their beets, , and calls for more farmers to engage in this new enterprise. The factories and rasping stations in operation have a daiiy capacity of nearly 55.000 tons of beets. Each of these factories is in operation opera-tion not less than ninety days annually, an-nually, which calls for a yearly supply of 3,600,000 tons of beets, from which 380,000 tons of sugar arc produced. At the present average production this requires about 51,000 formers to grow the beets. At the present price the returns to them are nearly $17.-000,000 $17.-000,000 in cash. With this production, however, it is still necessary for the United States to import something like, 3,000,000 tons of sugar annually to supply the I present .population at the current rate of consumption. To manufacture all the sugar this country consumes would require 360 factories, with an average output of 6w tons of beets daily, in 'addition to those already in operation. These factories would require 300,-000 300,-000 farmers to supply them with beets, for- which they would receive $90,000,000. , .Mr r 1 tisirr. The yearly consumption per capita has increased 8 pounds during the past tern yoars, that is, approximately 645,000,000 pounds, or 330,000 tons, more sugar was consumed last year than wouldl have been consumed ten years -ago had the population at that time been the same as it is to-day. This is almost a much sugar as the 57 factories would have produced last year if they had been operated at full capacity, but as a matter of fact it is nearly 85,000 tons more than they actually produced. This goes to show that the manufacture manu-facture of beet sugar in the United States, in spite of its wonderful progress pro-gress during the past few years, has not even kept pace with the increased rate of consumption. |