The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1910-03-04
A SHORT CHAPTER
FOR LIVE FARMERS.
ShiftIess and Slack Farmers, PIsase
Don't Read.


Don't Read.
Sugar beets are winning every season,
are bound to win, and if you haven't
yet, you will have 10 acknowledge the
same, if you live much longer, for the
fact will be before you so plainly of
the extra success of those. around you
who have raised beets, that you cannot
deny the reality of the statement.
They are the greatest land renovating
crop known TO agriculture. "Oh!
That's lie" you say, ''for | have
heard that they rob the soil so you
couldn't raise anything afterwards"
Who said so? I've heard lots of PEG
pie say so. Yes, but did you ask them
how long they have raised beets, or if
they had ever raised any at all or not?
No, | didn't. Well, why didn't your
Why didn't you investigate little be-
fore you went home and told neighbor
Jones, who had happened to write up a
small contract, that il would ruin his
land, and he was fool for raising any
such crop, and added, no sugar beet
agent can fool me to raise sugar beets
and ruin my farm, and from the result
of such talk by yourself and others,
you scared neighbOr Jones so he told
the field man when he came to look at
his beets that the season was so bad
that he couldn't get them in. Well,
Jones was a fool for listening to you,
and not sowing his beets, but you were
foolish for trying to influence Jones to
not SOW his beets. You ought to have
considered it like this:
Every acre of land put out to beets
diminishes the number of acres for
other crops just that much, and leaves
you in the market with less competition
which means greater prices for your
crops. But, hold on, here are the facts:
If you will take the time to 60 far
enough in the investigation to find them
out before you try to prevent your
neighbor from raising sugar beets.
From very carefully gathered stats
tics, over a period of fifty
years in Germany and France, it is
found that the farm lands in the dis
trict of sugar mills, which have been
rotated with beets, are yielding from
20 per cent to 40 per cent more cereal
crop per year than the farms outside of
the limit of the sugar mill, and, further,
the farmers of the sugar beet territory
would double their contract acreage in
a single day if the mills would accept
of it, in the face of the fact that sugar
eets are less in price and other crops
greater in price than in our country.
You say, why is the German farmer
so anxious to increase his acreage if
beets are cheaper and other crops great
er in price than here? Simply because
he knows from actual experience that
the productiveness of his farm in other
crops will be increased 40 per cent if he
can raise all the beets that his farm
will allow in his rotation. You might
have heard something like this, but
you were VERY careful to not tell
Jones about it, because you thought
there might probably be something in
it, and if Jones learned TO raise beets
and increased the productiveness of
his farm, he might pay up his mort
gage, get some surplus money and buy
an automobile, while you would be
Flooding along in the same old way,
just making a decent living. You jeal-
Gus mani Don't you know that if your
neighbors all had money to spend you
would be much better situated and able
to get hold of money much more easily
than if you lived in a neighborhood
where your neighbors were all hard up?
The great cry that the American
Farmer has put up about the beets
hurting the land is myth, and the
people are beginning TO find it out. In
Germany, from very carefully gathered
statistics, comparing the yield of crops
in territory where beets have been
raised in the rotation with the same
crops outside of the sugar beet territory,
they find that the raising of sugar
beets has benefited the land to such an
extent that the yield of wheat has been
increased 94 bushels per acre, yield of
rye bushels per acre, yield of barley
S.S bushels per acre, yield of oats 17.6
bushels per acre, and the yield of pota-
toes 1l5 bushels per acre.
These figures have been picked up so
carefully by the Germans that the farm
ers, the scientific agricultural men and
everybody all agree upon the increased
productiveness of the farms and lands
which are rotated with sugar beets. Do
you wonder at the German farmers
eagerness to double their sugar beet
acreage?
There is not another farm crop that
will permeate the ground so thoroughly
with mass of fibrous roots as the
sugar beet. These rootlets will pene-
trate the very hardest of soil, loosening
it, and as they are vegetable and not
WOOug do blC lOOlO VI ulOSI ldIIn
crops, they soon decay, leaving the
hardest of soil pierced with innumer-
able little holes which loosen and fill it
full of vegetable matter.
From carefully conducted expert
ments, it has developed that the fine
fibrous rootlets from good crop of
beets will carry down into the soil
from one to two tons of vegetable mat
ter per acre, leaving some of this down
deep into the soil which induces the
rootlets of other farm crops to go down
and take up the plant food which is
there and has been liberated and made
soluble by the vegetable matter left
in the soil from the fine beet roots.
W. 7. Wayment, of Warren, Weber
county, Utah, had 10 acres Of land
which had been producing him %
bushels of wheat per acre. The same
piece of land was put out to beets
three years in succession, then put
back to wheat again, and il produced
40 bushels per acre. Did sugar beets
spoil this field? No, but gave il an
- a On