OCR Text |
Show Sugar Companies Plan to Meet Increased Demand In keeping with the raising, as a patriotic duty, of more sugar beets by farmers, as well as other essential products, the beet sugar manufacturing industry of the in-terniountain in-terniountain states will doubtless be called upon in 1942 to produce to its limit. Also because of the invasion of the Philippines by Japan, it is now almost certain that the sugar supplies coming into the United States from that area, amounting to approximately 15 per cent of the country's supply, will be cut off. A substantially increased production pro-duction of beet sugar may be ex- j pected to make up a portion of this loss. Other likely events will likewise tend to encourage . domestic ex- j pansion of the industry. They include in-clude extension for three years of the 1937 federal sugar beat act, with a probable increase in benefit bene-fit payments to smaller growers; moderate increase in the price of sugar from the lows of 1940, with subsequent fixing of a sugar price ceiling, and possible extension exten-sion of. the quota provisoins of the sugar act so that beet growers grow-ers may be free to contract with each sugar company for all the beets the processors can handle in each factory district. Under such conditions, Utah may be able to expand its sugar production by 20 per cent. Interesting developments in the past year included announced perfection per-fection of a practical mechanical . beet topper, which was successfully successful-ly demonstrated at Garland last Armistice day, and the announcement announce-ment that sugar beet seed balls, each containing two or more seed germs, can now be mechanically segmented. This will pave the way for real single seed germ planting, which promises to eventually eliminate elim-inate much of the manual labor now required each year for thinning thin-ning and blocking of young sugar "beet plants. Growers and processors are keenly interested in the report of a new seed bath which triples the production of sugar beets. A cheap chemical in which the seeds are soaked is said to have increased yields from 5.6 tons per acre in Oaklahoma to 16.8 tons. |