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Show Sugar Beet Industry Builds I The Country i The By-Prod net s Worth Much to Beet Growers; One Pound ot'Dried Bert Pulp Is Equal to One Pound of Ground Corn Meal When Fed to Dairy Cows A man by the name of Dennis, ot Idaho Falls, Idaho, gave some interesting inter-esting and valuable information on the suga.r beet industry. He says: There are hundreds of men who can recall the condition before the tmgar industry was established. Hundreds who can recall the conditions condi-tions far enough back when there were no values. Neither land values nor produce values. If a man had enough luck to run a bill at one of the few stores during the season he could take Irs product in the fall and square up his account. When the sugar factory came in about 22 years ago land immediately jumped. Loan companies became interested. Values became stabilized and they commenced to go upwaird fill they reach the peak in war times when In many cases farms sold for two to three hundred dollars an acre and even more. "Anyone who paid any partioular attention to the progress of events in this section knows that beets have made the country. Hundreds of farmers will tell you that potatoes are the big money crop. In many instances this will be correct. However, How-ever, there are a good many "its" in the potato prne. Potatoes are extremely ex-tremely perishable. Beets can be frozen till they are as hard as rocks lay till they are black in the face Yet the mill will get all the sugar content and the pulp will make just as good feed. Let a potato get even one eye f roster and it is pig feed right away, and even worse than that if not gotten out immediately. "Beets are shipped out as a manufactured manuf-actured product while potatoes go as raw material. "There is a Ijt of difference in freight, and people are not losing their eyesight, reading about Union . Pacific lowering rates. Besides the industiy of manufacturing beets into suar leaves a lot of money) in the hands of home people. j i "And right heire comes a thoughr. 'that should not be lost sight of. The culture of beets as well as the manu facturing end, requ'res he employ- ment of a large number or people. Many times larger than it does tor the same acreage or potatoes. And the labor covers a much longer period of working months in the year. It could be made ,praclically a year around proposition if enough beets wore raised. The prosperity of any country depends largely on its ability to rurnish employment tor men. "This is not written as a disapara-'ment disapara-'ment to the potato industry. The potato is a irreat crop. One that makes money hand over fist when the price is right. However it is not the backbone of the country's industrial indus-trial structure. If it were we wouldn't would-n't he able to perambulate very successfully suc-cessfully only about one out of every five year's, and wouldn't the banks have a heck of a time playing chiropractor chiro-practor to the numerous ills which might arise during the four years intervening? Speaking in the broader terms the by-products of beets, according to the scientific men, can be made -to bring in about as much as the beets themselves. them-selves. This iby the way of reeding the pulp, tops and syrup to stock. Before the sugar beets was introduc ed in Denmark, farmers raised principally prin-cipally orain. This was exported unt'l the soil refused to stand such 'uneconomical abuse. Farmers had to find a more fertile soil. Then the Danish government stepped in and ordeded that nothing be exported except ex-cept sunshine and rain in the form of butter and cheese. Beets were introduced in-troduced as dairy feed with sugar as a by-product. It was soon learned learn-ed that if a farmer who had previous ly raised hay and grain for his dairy herd on 40 acres of land planted 10 acres of sugar beets, he raised more food on the remaining 30 acres than he previously raised on 40 acres and , had besides his cash crop of beets from 10 a ores. "In various experiments in the United States where beet pulp has been fed with alfalfa, the scientific (Continued on last page.) |