The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1898-01-12
Beat Sugar in America.

The agricultural experiment station
III Missouri does not encourage the
farmers of that State to go into the
cultivation OF the sugar bects, but the
tests OF the College of Agriculture in
Cornell University are very cncourag-
ing to the farmers Of New York.
Tests OF bce.s from 272 plats in tvcn-
ty-two Counties give an average of
very close to seventeen tons of beets
tc the acre and of 1G per cent. of
sugar Ia the bcets. Both of these 70,
suits are high. Thirteen to fifteen
per cent. of sugar is common and the
yield is usually twelve to fourteen
tons co the acre, though with careful
cultivation it has frequently run q
good deal above twenty tons.
Test plats and laboratory expert
ments probably give better results
than general field culture and factory
work. The experiments arc in no
sense decisive except for half dozen
Counties. Of the 272 plats from
which beets were tested 234 were in
six Counties; as to the other sixteen
Counties it cannot be said that enough
is yet known to warrant the opinion
that sugar beet raising would pay in
them.
Sixteen per cent. of sugar from sew
entecn tons of beets gives little
more than 5000 pounds Of sugar to
the acre. Four dollars and half
ton for the beets at seventeen tons to
the acre would be little more than
e., ~ l.
bcets. A factory getting its bcets at
this price would be profitable con-
cern, while the farmer who got $76.5O
an acre for his gross crop would be on
the high road to prosperity. Three
dollars ton would be very high al
lowance for his expenses, and it would
leave him net profit of 5000 per
acre. That compares very favorably
with seventy cents bushel for four
teen bushels of wheat per acre. the
costs of cultivation to be deducted
from these gross receipts of 80.
How favorable the above figures are
may be appreciated from the fact that
in the past season in the Watsonville
factory, California. S6,351 tons of
bcets yielded 10,SS5 tons Of sugar, or
1873 per cent. Of the weight of the
beets, while the results of another
very large run were only 1913 per
cent. of sugar: Yet the factory pays
81 ton for bccts and is apparently
prosperous AZ d recent meeting in
Ogden: Utah, Of gentlemen who pro
posed to go into the beet sugar manu-
facture stockholder in the factory at
Lehi said that for the past two years
that factory had paid dividends of
37a per cent. annually, and in his
opinion the factory at Ogden could
make more money than the factory ct
Lehi. But the last season was bad
one for the farmers near the Lehi fac
tory. A dispatch from Alvarado,
CAL, says that from 5000 acres the
farmers would harvest only $4,000
tons Of beets instead of the $4,000
that they expected. This is only Z!
tons to the acre instead of more than
l3 tons. But the farmers were none
the less determined to raise beets next
year; for bcets they were sure Of 81
ton; even on the poor yield of last
season this would be $50 an acre on
certainty, but they would, of course,
AdSC IISut W cApcCC SUtucIuluS
good deal better than the minimum
production. Even with moderately
poor yield they could scarcely lose and
might make little.
From Los Alamitos 10000 tons of
beets yielded 14.5 per cent. in sugar,
the crop being 10.4 tons to the acre,
and the receipts Of the farmers, S38,
very nearly, to the acre. Here the
yield Of sugar to the acre on nearly
5000 acres was $500 pounds.
The records of the Belgian beet
sugar production for nine years show
an increase Of more than 56 per cent.
in the acreage; the yield Of beets per
acre ranged from 1914 to 1916 tons,
and averaged 1913; the percentage of
sugar in the beets varied from II. 8 to
1872, and the yield of sugar per acre
averaged 3,495 pounds.-.Journa1 of
Commerce.