The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1878-10-17
8be Farm.
~Beet-Sugar Facts.

Oh the N1dlut OldlO
making sugar from beets, thus
writes to the Maryland Farmer.
He knows all about the sub
ject:
cit is difficult to tell whether
high farming in Europe has
fostered the beet sugar industry
or whether this industry has
stimulated high farming; the
fact is they 60 hand in hand,
and for this reason the successful
introduction of this will be a
blessing to the farmer and
through him to the country at
large, because without agricul-
tural prosperity, no lasting pros
perity of any other kind is pos
sible. We find these theories
exemplifed even the first year,
when every farmer looked upon
beet raising as a mere expert
ment. On good land we'll pre-
pared and in good heart the
beet crop looks very fine, it will
give a good yield and pay the
farmer well; but on worn out
poorly prepared land the crop
looks poor and will yield but
little, land which can hardly
reproduce the seed of buckwheat
cannot be expected to produce a
fine root crop. There is no law
which applies to a beet crop
which is not applicable to every
other crop, only it shows it in a
more glazing light.
The sugar beet crop this year
shows how much more indepen-
dent the thorough farmer is of
changes and extremes of weather
than he who has cropped his
land to death. On good worked
and well MANFRED land the sugar
beets have hardly shown a
wilted leaf during the excessive
hot and dry spell early in July,
but on poor land they have alb
solutely persisted though they
came up well.
The most difficult task for a
farmer is to produce sufficient
and cheap manure. With plenty
of manure it is no great art to
raise a good crop of almost any
thing-without i. is almost inn
possible. To produce cheap
and plenty of manure it re-
quires plenty of cattle, and few
of our hard working farmers can
wait for years to have the calf
become a fat steer, the farmer
has to live and so the calf has to
60 to the butcher. More than
anything else the farmer needs
to raise a cash yielding crop.
There is where the beet sugar
industry will help the farmer in
more than one way. There are
many beet fields in Maine from
the seashore to Aroostook county
which will yield from Is to 20
tons of beets per acre, which
means from $50 to $50 cash.
The tops are at least an equiva-
lent to half a ton of the best hay
and each field which yields IL
to 20 tons of beets in cash value
will yield twelve tons of pumice
of those those beets at a feeding
value of at least two and a hal.
tons of hay. This most valuable
cattle feed ought to go back tc
the best raisers who can we'll af
ford after making $6Oto $50 pei
Lei in cash, to feed this pumice
to his mulch COWS and young
stock and thus lay a most sub
stantlal foundation to prosperity
The beet pumice fed with corr
fodder, hay, &C., will give mos
valuable manure and plenty O
1T, and when eventually the su
gar factories are located in th,
country villages where thei
proper place is and the farme
has besides the advantages her
enumerated, also the advantag
OF taking scum from the suga
works to his fields, then an,
then only has he reaehed tn
point at which he can Justly sa:
sugar beet growing enriches tn
land. Then the Europea,
proverb will be applicable
1.-The more beets the more mea'
the more grain and the more {