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Show Sugar Beets Will Make Your Cash Income Larger DR. GEORGE STEWART Agronomist, Utah Agricultural Experiment Station. Sugar beet growing in Utah has declined more than 50 per cent since 1920. In that year there were 113,000 acres of sugar beets in the state, from which were harvested 1,261,000 tons of beets. In 1928, there were about 50,000 acres harvested har-vested which produced 560,000 ions of beets. The number of operating factories decreased from 18 in 1920 to 15 in 1915; to 11 in 1927; and to 10 in 1928. The beet acreage decreased de-creased from 113,000 to 83,000 to 67,000 to 53,000, and finally this last season to 50,00 acres. This tremendous tre-mendous lapse in the beet sugar industry has taken place with scarcely more than a ripple of interest in-terest in the public mind. This state of affairs in the sugar beet industry deserves serious attention. at-tention. The group concerned is much larger than most people think. Offhand, the professional and business man in town would say that farmers and sugar manufacturers manu-facturers were the only ones affected affec-ted in an important way. A somewhat some-what more careful examination of the relationships between the sugar industry and other occupations reveals re-veals a complex, network of interest inter-est which reaches, either directly or indirectly, practically every popu lation group in the state. t Heavy Investment Sugar companies are vitally concerned con-cerned over a situation that reduces their volume of business more than half in six or sevsn years. Since a sugar factory represents an investment in-vestment of from one to two million mil-lion dollars, the closing down or removal of factories in seven years is nothing short of a financial jar. A sugar factory should operate 90 to 1230 days in order to use the equipment with moderate efficiency. effic-iency. Several factories did not turn a wheel in 1926, 1927, or 1928. Most of the factories which did operate were in actual use only ' from 30 to 60 days. Such condi-i tions will kill any industry in a short time. Every taxpayer in Utah is affected affect-ed at once by the loss of assessable capital. Whenever a sugar factory in a community ceases to operate ! it must at once be restored to activity, ac-tivity, or its early removal is inevitable. in-evitable. Utah has recently lost factories to Montana, to South Dakota, Da-kota, and to Nebraska, and is, on the verge of losing more. Such loss tneans one of two twines to the ural community: Either Jl) aU increase in the tax rate on other properties, or (2) a reduction in the volume of public works. One of Utah's chief concerns is the finding find-ing of possible new sources of taxes. tax-es. With all that can be done regarding re-garding mines, intangible properties, proper-ties, and incomes, the intermoun-tain intermoun-tain states have no great future unless some form of manufacturing can be developed. Where can we make a better beginning than to maintain and to encourage one of the two good starts we have al- valuations and land valuations are practically certain to deteriorate in a rural district which loses its sugar factories and the accompanying accompany-ing agriculture. Whole State Suffers Business and professional men cannot fail to sense a depression in commercial activity should the income in-come of from five to ten million dollars derived from the sugar industry in-dustry be entirely stopped. Rural communities will suffer the greater proportianate injury, but business even in our larger towns will feel the disturbance. The vast decline is due in part to the feeling of farmers that they can grow other crops more profitably. profit-ably. This is true in certain cases, but in the main, sugar beets are twice as profitable as grain and forage crops. In 1927, 57 per cent of Utah's cropped acreage was in hay and alfalfa seed, but produced only 41 per cent of the total crop value; 31 per cent was in grain but produced only 22 per cent of the crop value. Only 5 per cent of the croo land erew suear beets that year, but this 5 per cent produced, 13 per cent of crop value. In other; words, for hay and grain the ratio of value to acreage was 0.7, whereas where-as for sugar beets it was 2.6. The average total returns from an acre of sugar beets is more than three times the average incomef from grain and hay. Some of the grain and hay is on poorer land, but the ratio is at least 2 to 1 in favor of beets. Fear Unwarranted Uncertained years, such as 1924 and 1926, have built up' a fear complex com-plex regarding sugar beets. Proper crop rotation, good manuring, and moderately assured and careful irrigation ir-rigation can overcome to a considerable consid-erable extent these losses. In years when normal water supply is assured assur-ed and when white fly injury can be expected to be low, farmers and business men alike can afford to encourage beet growing. Good plant breeding can probably after a few years produce a beet which may be stung by the leafhopper and make considerable growth. Meanwhile, good farming supplemented supple-mented by water storage and partial par-tial predictions as to white fly in |