Yerington times. [volume] (Yerington, Nev.) 1907-1932, 1911-10-21
THE GREAT VALUE
OF The SUGAR BEET

dorf. Mr. Palmer is Secretary of tn,
United States Beet Sugar Industry, which
is an association of manufacturers who
try to get all they can out of the subject
but, according to Mr.. Palmer, they dc
not exhaust IT. If the American farmer
could be grown would SOW a crop OF
beets every fourth year he could double
or triple his usual crops of wheat, oats,
potatoes or rye i'll the other three years,
and better has been done.
Mr. Palmer has been in most of the
countries where the sugar beet is made
most of and he has studied the history of
the beet-suar industry. He SAYS Napo-
leon Bonaparte was the sugar beet s first
great benefactor, and he benefited the
world by putting up government fac
tories in France and making the French
farmers grow the roots for the factories
to work on.
1t was only in 1879 that the first sue
cessful beet sugar factory i'll this country
was put up, said Mr. Palmer, and we
did not produce 1000 tons a year until
1883. Last year this country turned out
500 900 tons.
The first factory of which there is
any record was put up i'll Germany in
1SUl Then the Germans went to sleep,
and Napoleon Bonaparte took the matter
up. He sent delegation of scientific
men over to look at the German factory.
Sugar was then costing 10 cents a pound
to produce and the consumer paid IS
cents pound for it, Bonaparte's COM
mission came back to Paris and put in
10 yeare at experimental work before
they got to a point where they saw what
they could do with the sugar beet
But i'll that time the commission had
made remarkable discovery. Europe
had then reached its lowest stage Of
productivity. They had been blowing
the soil only three or four inches deep,
resting the land every other year The
French investigators discovered that by
rotating a crop of sugar beets with or
binary crops, planting the sugar beet
once i'll four years, the other crops were
doubled and even quadrupled.
AS soon as the report OF the COM
mission reached Napoleon he appropri-
ated 900, 900 france for the erection of
beet sugar factories and the establish
ment of scientific schools for the study
OF the industry and directed his Minister
OF the Interior TO see to it that the farm
ers planted 90, 600 acres in beets that
wear This was in 1871. In 1918 there
were 54S beet -sguar factories III France
when Napoleon met his downfall
the sugar beet industry went TO smash.
only two factories out of the whole
number survived, and the industry eX-
perienced no revival until the time OF
Napoleon Ill 1t was not until the early
'7Is that Germany realized what France
had been doing with beets, and by offer
ing big bounties the country has gone
away ahead in the industry. Germany
last year produced over 10000 tons of
beet sugar, and after supplying her own
people, exported $50, 600, 900 worth of
the product.
Besides this, Germany yielded other
crops which reached a valuation of 500, -
900, 900 in excess of the same acreage in
this country.
Sugar beets are now being grown in
sixteen of our States, but our biggest
beet growers are III Michigan, Colorado
aud California. Factories are scattered
all about In Michigan there are six
teen. Are there cooperative factories?
Not in this country. They have them i'll
Germany, where the farmer supplies
beeis at a low price to the mill and takes
his money out of the dividends the fac
tory makes. There is not a country i'll
Europe, with the exception of England,
that does not produce its own sugar.
"Ol course, all our half-million tons OF
beet sugar is used here; cane sugar can,
perhaps, be made a trihe cheaper, be-
cause labor in the tropics is so much
cheaper than here. But the growing OF
sugar beets may have results of which
the sale of beets is a small item.
According to Secretary Wilson of the
Department of Agriculture, we have Sc
much beet sugar territory that if only
one acre in fifty were planted in beetS
once in every four years we could supply
our demand for sugar II we diversified
our wheat, oats, barley, rye and pota'
toes every four years with sowing OF
beets we would produce as great ton
mage of beet sugar as Germany, and ON
farmers would be enriched 81 900, 600, OOC
year. These are big figures, but they
are borne out by experience, wherever
our beet farmers have kept track OF then
yield before they started planting beet'
and since for our land where beets are
81, 81