OCR Text |
Show WONDER OF THE SUGAR BEET There is a lot in a beet, according to Truman G. Palmer, who is at tho "Waldorf Mr Palmer is secretary of tho United States Beet Sugar Industry, Indus-try, which is aneassociatlon of manufacturers manu-facturers who try to get all they can out of the subject, but, according to Mr. Palmer, they don't exhaust It. Tf the American rarmor who lives in n district where sugar ibeets could he grown would sow a crop of beets every fourth year he could double or triple his usual crops of wheat, oats potatoes or rje In the other three years, and better nas been done. Mr. Palmer has been In niost of the countries where tho sugar beet Is made most of and ho has studied tho history of the beet sugar industry. He says tWipoleon Bonaparto was the sugar beet's first great benefactor and he benefited the world by putting up government factories In France and making the French farmers grow tlie roots for the factories to work on. "It was only in 1S79 that the first successful beet sugar factory in this country waB put up." said 3Ir. Palmer, Pal-mer, "and we did not produce as much as 1,000 tons a'year until 18S8. Last year this countrv turned out 500,000 tons. ''Tho first factory of which there Is an3' record was put up in Germany In 1801, Then the Germans went to sleep over their beets and Napoleon Bonaparto took the matter up. Ha sent a delegation of scientific men over ov-er to look at the German factory. Sugar was then coating 16 cents a pound to produco and the consumer paid 35 cents a pound for IL Bonaparte's Bona-parte's commission camo back to Paris and put In ten years at experimental experi-mental work before they got to a point whore they saw what they could do with the sugar beet. "But in that time the commission had made a remarkable discovery. Europe had then reached Its lowest stage of productivity. They had been ploughing the soil only three or four inches deep, resting the land every other year. The French Investigators discovered that by rotating a crop of sugar-beets with ordinary crops, planting tho sugar beet once in four years, tho other crops were doubled and even quadrupled. "As soon as the report of tho commission com-mission reached Napoleon he appropriated appro-priated 1,000,000 francs for the erection erec-tion of beet sugaritactorlcs and tho establishment of scientific schools for the study of the Industry and directed his Minister of the Interior to see to it that the farmers planted 90,000 acres in beets that jear. This was In 1SSS. In 1S13 there were 34S beet sugar factories In France, "When Napoleon met his downfall the beet sugar Industry went to smash. Only two factories out of the whole number survived, and the Industry In-dustry experienced no survival until the time of Napoleon III. It was not until the early 70's that Germany realltfod what the French had been doing with beets, and by offering big bounties the country has gone away ahead In the Industry. Germany Inst year produced over 2,000,000 tons of beet sugar, and after supplying Its own people exported $50,000,000 worth of the product. "Besides this, Germany yielded other crops which reached a valuation $900,000.1)00 In excess of the same crops produced from the same acreage In this country. "Sugar beets are now being grown In sixteen of our States, but the biggest big-gest beet growers are in Michigan, Colorado and California. Factories arc scattered all about. In 'Michigan, there are sixteen. Are there co-operative factories7 Not In this country. They hae them In Germain, where the farmer Biippllcs beets at a low-price low-price to the mill and takes his dividends divi-dends out of tho money the factory makes. There Is not a country In JSuropo, with tho exception of England, Eng-land, that does not produco Its own sugar. "Of course, all our halt million ton3 of beet sugar is used here, Cano sugar can perhaps be made a trifle cheaper, because labor in the tropics Is so much cheaper than here But the growing ot sugar beets may havo results of which the sale of beets is but a small Item. "According to Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agriculture, we havo so much beet sugar territory that If only one acre In fifty were planted In beets onco every four years, wo could supply our own en-tiro en-tiro demand for sugar. If wc diversified diver-sified our wheat, oats, barley, ry1 and potatoes every (our years with a sowing of beets' we would produco as great a tonnage of beet sugar as Germany, and our farmers would be enriched by $I,GOO,000,OOOa year Those are big figures, hut thev arc . borne out by experience, wherever our beet farmers have kept track of their yield before Ihr-y started plant ing beets and since," for our land where beets arerotated with othe" crops shows even greater Increase than land In Germany and Franco "Why Is no6 sugar beet rotation more practised Mn (thls country? Because Be-cause we have "no 'way of taking the farmer by the back of the neck in this country and telling him ho must do thus and so. Beets would be a new crop, and our farmers are slow about turning to anything new In crops. "Under the DIngley bill we started to produce quantities of beet sugar During the first five years after tho bill became a law the number of factories fac-tories Increased 000 per cent. Then came Cuban reciprocity, and in tho next five years our factories Increased only a little o;er 100 per cent, while j our acreage went up over GOO per I cent, so that our farmers thus bore I the brunt of free sugar "Sugar beets are not difficult to raise, but their culture is careful work. However, It Is an advantage, for the farmer is made to feel that hl3 crop must be tended Every bcot sugar factory becomes an agricultural experiment station for instructing farmors In how to tend to beet crops well. "It Is the rule In Europe that boots are planted on a field only once in four years. Over here. I regret to say, some farmers who havo gone on for beet growing plant beets year after year as longs as the. land lasts. The farmer In this country raises beets so that he can get go much per ton and so many per acre. Over in Europe hy planting only one crop of beets In four years they vastly Increase In-crease their other crops. Over there they get twenty-eight bushels of wheat to the acre to our fourteen. In tho three States, Kansas, Missouri and Iowa, there are 5.000,000 aores of land In wheat, which Is the slzo of Germany's wheat area Yet Germany produces 140,000,000 Bushels of wheat to 55,000,000 raised in t-hoso three States. France and Minnesota each plant 10,000,000 acres in wheat Yot France produces 324.000,000 bushels to the 185,000,000 of Minnesota. "And It Is on account of the sugar beet. There Is no more question about the beet sugar industry's being the father of modern fldontlfic acncn'iture than about any man's being f father of his own Bon. Let me show how beet culture works out In its effects on other crops. In the first place you have to plough deep When the beet Is ploughed up you break off over v so many- tiny fibres which havo run down into "the earth In all directions. They ro-enrlch tho soil and also give the air a chance to get down Thus your next ordinary crop. Instead of having only five or six. inches of soil to draw from for nutriment has double that thickness. "Of course you cannot grow sugar beets evcrvwhoro In this country. Theoretically tho beet culture territory terri-tory Is the Isotherm of 70 degrees mean temperature, but along tho Appalachian Ap-palachian range beets have been cultivated cul-tivated 500 miles below the isotherm. "It Is not generally known that hy experimentation the productive quality qual-ity of the sugar beet has been run up to from 4- or 4 per cent to lfi or 18 'per cent and the size Increased from a tlnv root of a. few ounces to two pounds Today wo arc getting more granulated sugar from a beet than the original 3ugar beets elghed. The sugar in a bcot, by the way, all comes from tho atmosphere. "In Germany they keep tho pedigrees pedi-grees of famous beets, Just as wo would those of horses and cows. Most of our beet seed comes from ovor thore At Klolne Wanzleben, near Magdeburg, they can show you a photograph and give you the history of every 'mother' beot they have raised over there In the ln3t twenty years " |