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Show County Agent's Column The future general welfare of the people of Miiiard County depends to a large extent on hut farm families do with the increased earnings they have made during the past few years. Farm families 'should sit down and inventory their resources and list their needs. Millard County can gain perma-nenty perma-nenty if fanners use their increased increas-ed capital on increasing the fertility fer-tility of their soils and improving; their irrigation sytems. Better homes should be provided. Electric power and lights should be installed. install-ed. Modern and efficient well a-dapled a-dapled machinery and equipment on the farm and in the home, can do much to increase the earning capacity of the farm and will in the end, conserve the entire farm business. Capital that is invested in efficient effi-cient and well adapted equipment is highly productive. Anytime a farmer spends capital to hold his soil where it belongs or to improve its fertility, he is spending in the right way. Capital that is used to purchase more land is not productive product-ive if the price paid for the' land exceeds its normal value. At this time farmers should remember 2.-000,000 2.-000,000 farms have been foreclosed since World War I. Be rareful about increasing your total farm acreage. The competition competi-tion that is coming in agriculture may make it hard on the farmers with a big mortgage debt. Every farmer should remember that land is worth no more than he can get from the produce taken from it. If you are going to invest in additional addi-tional land and new equipment do not figure on high prices for all crops and livestock produced. An average over a ten yer period is always a safe way to figure. In a news article published two weeks age, the statement was given giv-en that dual purpose dairy cows produce 270 pounds of dairy fat. In the study made in Summit county cou-nty of 15 herds of 12 cows to the herd of dual purpose or Shorthorn cattle, the butter fat average for the year was 170 pounds, rather than 270 pounds. If you are feeding lambs, you might be interested to know that it takes 236 bushels of barley and 13 tons of hay to put on 30 pounds of lamb for each 100 head in the feed yard. If you use these figures fig-ures you can estimate the amount of lamb you should buy to eat up all the feed you produce. George Whornham, County Agent. Last spring 97 farmers of the Delta area, signed up to grow sugar su-gar beets, but only 72 of these farmers delivered beets to the company this fall. This means that 25 farmers, during the course of the season, chose to abandon their acreages intended for sugar beet production. Reasons for this were varying, yet in most cases the late spring and the black beetle along with the hail storm caused these farmers to change their plans. Some of this land was used to produce a late crop of grain but a large part of it was left and was taken over by weeds. About 17t)0 acres of beets were planted last sprin. Of this 1700 acres rougly 1100 acres were harvested. Seed cost 70c a pound and it takes 4 pounds to plant 1 acre or S2.S0 per acre for seed. We can say that about $1700 was lost on GOO acres that were abandoned last spring. There was an untold amount of labor in seed bed preparation pre-paration and in planting and ir-gation ir-gation etc., that can be chalked up as a complete loss. The highest number of tons er acre was near 20 and the lowest around 4 tons an arce with an average av-erage estimated to be near 11 tons, for acres harvested. If the sugar content is about the same this year as last, the farmers of the Delta area should receive in the neighborhood of $12.50 a ton. This being the case the beet industry will show a gross return of about $150,000 or ligured on a basis of the average farm on average reduction, the 72 farmers who delivered beets should receive re-ceive a little over $2,000 gross income in-come each for their crop of beets this year. The net income to each farmer would be considearbly less than $2,000 but better farming practices involved will compensate in the long run. To encourage beet production for another year the sugar company, comp-any, as it did last year, is giving farmers who have produced beets, a chance to get more sugar without with-out ration points. Beet growers can get 25 pounds per acre for beets planted or 25 pounds per member of the family, which ever is least. Growers contracts for next season will show a $1.00 per ton increase over last season. It would seem that those farm- , ers who have produced beets in the past should profitably produce beets another year. Acreages might well be increased increas-ed to a good advantage but even though beets will grow on poorly drained, tight, saline soils: it should be rememberd that most profitable production is on the better bet-ter land. Rodney G. Rickenbach, Ass't. County Agent. |