The Wisconsin tobacco reporter. (Edgerton, Wis.) 1877-1950, 1905-01-06
THE SUGAR BEET PROPOSITION.
What Growers Have to Say About the
Business,

|--S
Business.
EDGERToN, Dec. "a, 1904.
AS many articles have been published
| in the county papers with regard to the
| profits of raising sugar beets, / would
| like to give your readers my experience
| in beet culture. My tenant raised eight
| acres on as rich land as there is in Rock
county He took extra good care of
them and is acknowledged to be-a first
class farmer. He had good stand of
beets and kept the soil free from weeds
| and we'll cultivated. l pulled several
beets in his field in September that
weighed 8 pounds each, and everyone
who looked them over said they were ex-
ira good and far above the average crop
of beets. A few days ago we received
our returns, amounting to $500, in full
for the eight acres, netting us $3.50 per
acre. For some reason his name was not
in the list Of growers recently published
in the Gazette. On the same farm my
hay brought 500 per acre, and any farm
er will acknowledge that there is more
labor on one acre Of beets than on twenty
acres of hay. Still two acres of hay
brought more than one acre of beets.
Corn on the same farm sold for $l4 per
acre, making 211a acres of corn worth the
same as one acre OF beets, and everyone
knows it requires about one-tenth the
amount of Work that beets do. Ore
acre Of potatoes on the same farm pro-
duced $50 bushels and were worth 4Oc
per bushel, or 500, which would equal
pa acres of beets, and the acre Of beets
requires more work than the acre OF po-
tatoes.
,,ko
shipped, but were sent to the factory
and like buying, lottery ticket we took
our chances. The other produce of the
farm was weighed when sold and proved
satisfactory.
On another farm l raised 7 acres of
beets and % acre of potatoes. | dug $50
at 40c per bushel would bring $50; and
one acre of potatoes worth the same as
three acres of beets, and raised with
about one-half the labor. Some readers
will say did not give the beets proper
care, but they we're hoed three times and
cultivated ten times and there were not
seven weeds in sight on the seven acres,
as the hundreds of people who passed
my place last season will acknowledge.
The first car shipped weighed few
pounds over q tons, but after reach.
ing the factory weighed Is tons and the
earth tare being 21O0 pounds, made the
net weight of the car Is tons and 1900
pounds. The next car was sent to
another factory and weighed 1917 tons
in Edgerton and 1871 tons at the fac
tory. shall not ship any more beets in
warm weather as they shrink too much
when exposed to the air and sun. How
ever, those beets | shipped in December
had shrunk go much in the pit that my
wagon loads that averaged BOO pounds
early in the fall only weighed 24OO pounds
from the pit. Therefore [ shall not ship
in cold weather, and as we can not ship
them in either warm or cold weather, we
will surely have them weighed and &C.
copied in Edgerton or let some one else |
raise them. No two lots of my beets
tested the same, but they all fell under
the IA per cent test lat the factories). /
do not say that the beets were not
weighed right at the factory, but it was
either that or the weather was too warm
or too cold for the beets or they were
sent away in the wrong time Of the moon.
Some growers are inclined to blame the
moon for it but the moon gets full about
once a month and the farmer who raises
the beets can't get full once year if he
depends on his profits for spending
money. If the writer of the articles in
the Gazette, stating that nearly all the
farmers are satisfied, will call on 80
growers in this community he will find
48 or 40 who are not, and can show him
farms where over 100 acres were raised
this year and also prove to him by the
owners that there will not be 10 acres in
1905. There was but one grower near
here that appeared to be satisfied and
he died before he got car.
A 1904 BEET GROVER.