The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1900-01-05
Where to Grow Sugar Bects.

No locality should go into the rails
ing Of sugar beets for factory use with
out having first raised a good many
beets and submitted them to analysis
lat the state experiment station. There
are many localities where sugar beets
can be raised in large quantities where
the sugar content would be so small
that the factories would refuse to ac-
cept them at all for working up into
sugar. A man might thus devote
large part of his farm to the raising
of sugar beets and find when he began
to haul them to market that they were
far below the standard required ana
would find that he would have to use
them solely for feeding stock. On this
page we print report of analyses OF
beets by the Ohio experiment station.
1t will be noticed that the factories
require that the beets aaalyze at least
IL per cent sugar Chat is, sucrose),
and that the per cent of pure sugar In
this sucrose be not less than ~ per
cent. Now, the beets from all parts
of Ohio went above these figures, but
when we come to separate the sam
pies into sections we find that in the
middle section of Ohio the beets an
alyzed only lis per cent sucrose, and
that the purity of this sucrose was
only IT'S. II is evident that beets from
this section would be rejected by the
factories. We cannot, however, be GER
tain that the samples sent in were fair
samples of the crops raised. The men
that selected them may have been
partly to blame for the poor showing
of the samples sent from the middle
section of Ohio. In noticing the size
of the beets sent it will be seen that
the beets from the middle section
weighed rs ounces, while from the
southern section they weighed 21.3
ounces each, and from the northern
section only 10 ounces. The per cents
of sugar shown by analysis were in
the same order. The smallest beets
gave 10 per cent, the next in size gave
1874 per cent and the largest beets gave
11.S per cent.
1t is possible that If the men that
selected the beets from the central por-
lions of the state had chosen ones
that weighed about twenty ounces each
they would have been found showing
a larger content of sugar. But 1t Is
certain that we have as yet no fixed
standard of comparison. 1t is believed
by some eminent professors that each
fruit, as the apple, has just so much
sweet content to distribute through
the whole, and that the larger the
fruit the less the percentage of this
content. This seems partly to be the
case with sugar beets. An increase be-
yond a certain size does not seem to
increase the total sugar content. But
this rule cannot be applied as fixity,
for the reason that the relative amount
of sucrose in the beets was not in exact
proportion to their sizes, and 1t Is a
well-known fact that beets of exactly
the same size vary greatly in sugar
content, even when grown on the same
ground and from the same seed. Thus
81 the figures quoted, the beets from
the middle section of the state were
just rs per cent larger than the aver
age of all the beets submitted, but
they analysed only about per cent
less than the average Of the beets sub
mitted. we cannot. therefore, lay this
down as rule, but can merely call it
general tendency. But this tendency
must be taken into consideration.
The grower of beets should have
land that will show very large con-
tent of sugar in the beets on ordinary
years, for he must have a considerable
margin on which to go. Should his
beets, for instance, show only about
enough sucrose contents on dry year
to get them through the inspectors
rules, and then a wet year come, in
which the beets would attain large
size, he might find tie whole falling
so far below the standard that they
would be rejected. 1t is evident that
the growers of beets need to consider
a good many things before r -o avs
the raising Of beets on large scale.