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

The agricultural experiment station
in Missouri does rot encourage the
farmers Of that State to go into the
cultivation of the sugar bcets, but the
tests of the College Of Agriculture in
Cornell University are very encourag-
ing to the farmers of New York.
Tests of bec.s from 2I2 plats in twen-
ty-two Counties give an average Of
very close to seventeen tons Of beets
tc the acre and of 1G per cent. Of
sugar in the bcets. Both of these re-
suits are high. Thirteen to fifteen
per cent. of sugar is common and the
yield is usually twelve to fourteen
tons to the acre, though with careful
cultivation it has frequently run a
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 PIP plats from
which bects 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
enteen tons Of beets gives a little
more than 5000 pounds of sugar to
the acre. Four dollars and a half
ton for the beets at seventeen tons to
the acre would be a little more than
/, cents pound for the sugar in the
beets. A factory getting its beets at
this price would be a profitable con-
cern, while the farmer who got S76.3O
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 would
leave him IL net profit of $3.50 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 50. So
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
beets 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 12.5 per
cent. Of sugar. Yet the factory pays
81 ton for bcets and is apparently
prosperous. At a recent meeting in
Ogden. Utah, of gentlemen who pro-
posed to go into The beet sugar manu-
facture stockholder in the factory at
Lchi said that for the past two years
that factory had paid dividends Of
81! per cent. annually, and in his
opinion the factory at Ogden could
make more money than the factory at
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 we're none
the less determined to raise beets next
year; for bcets they were sure OF 81 q
ton; even on the poor yield OF last
season this would be $50 an acre on
certainty, but they would, of course,
have right to expect something a
good deal better than the minimum
production. Even with q moderately
poor yield they could scarcely lose and
might make little.
From Los Aamitos 10000 tons Of
bcets yielded l-l.5 per cent. in sugar,
the crop being 1914 tons to the acre,
and the receipts of the farmers, S3S,
very nearly, to the acre. Here the
yield Of sugar to the acre on nearly
,. 900 acres was $3.50 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 l0.-I to l3.6 tons,
and averaged 12.S; the percentage OF
sugar in the bects varied from ll.9 to
1872. and the yield Of sugar per acre
averaged 3.i95 pounds.-Jo"rno| Of
Comn,cTrc.