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Show UTAH'S SUGAR BEET INDUSTRY Increased food production and conservation con-servation has been the slbgan upon the part of government experts and officials of Nation and State for the past year while the "back to the farm" cry has been preached by all for the past ten years. "Raise more foodstuffs" has been the constant cry upon the part of the press, the pulpit arid the people. To encourage this, governments, national, state-and state-and municipal, have aided the people peo-ple in the furnishing of seed and In many instances ground on which to plant foodstuffs. In line wih this desire there have been formed several companies In Utah for the purpose of increasing the beet sugar output and they are now appealing to the people to sign contracts for beet acreage sufficient to care for the new factories building build-ing and to be built to care fc the increased in-creased demand for sugar. There can be no question but what there is ample room in Utah for several sev-eral more beet sugar factories. In the United States there is not now produced pro-duced more than one-fourth of what the country consumes of this necessity neces-sity of life, to say notliing of supplying supply-ing our dependent allies with this product. Utah in particular is the one favored fav-ored spot for the growing of sugar beets the land, the climate and water "are all that can be desired; the sugar is demanded at home and abroad and the erection of more beet sugar factories is demanded. In 1916 the beet sugar product of Utah was practically 233,000,000 pounds. This was the product of thirteen thir-teen factories and of this product about 18 per cent was consumed In Utah .and adjoining state, the balance bal-ance being shipped to points on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, Texas, Tex-as, Oklahoma and other eastern points. Utah farmers raise more tons of beets per acre than does any other farmer in the United States, the average av-erage yield per acre for a five-year period being 12.50 tons as compared with 11.38 in Colorado, 9.79 in California Cali-fornia and 8.44 in Michigan and 10.13 for the entire United States. There are places in Utah, notably In the Sanpete valley, where the production pro-duction is 15 tons per acre. In addition addi-tion the farmer in Utah in the rotating rotat-ing of his land vv'itbbeets giving him the tops and pulp for feed for. his stock has an advantage over farmers of most of the states. The earning power of the beet lands in the state is over six per cent on land that is valued at $800- per acre. Two new factories are now being built, one at Delta and another at Moroni, while a third one is to be erected in the Gunnison valley near Gunnison, this latter to be ready to care for the crop of 1918 and for this latter plant contracts have already been signed up for 6154 acres for a period of seven years and this' acreage acre-age it is said will be largely increased. in-creased. In this valley there are nearly 8,000 people now engaged in farming and stock raising who like all other localities where. beet sugar plants are proposed are enthusiastic over the coming of the new plant. The plant at Delta is a long distance dist-ance from any other factory and the acreage which will supply it is unusually un-usually large, contracts for more than 10,000 acres having been signed, sign-ed, it is said. The plant at Moroni is forty miles north of the proposed plant at Gunnison and the plant at Blsinore is a like distance from Gunnison. Gun-nison. In the location of factories in this section of the state care has been observed so that the acreage tributary to one plant does not encroach en-croach upon the other. The need of more beet sugar factories fac-tories is apparent when the fact is known that the United States imported im-ported last year more than five and one-half billion pounds of sugar, which was valued at $209,000,000. Beet sugar manufacture is now the second industry of Utah. Why not push it to first place There is room and in plenty in the state for more sugar factories and there is need for many more beet farmers. |
