Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1912-11-13
RIVAL OF CORN IN IOWA.
State Farmers Reap Big Profit from
Sugar Beets on Small Amount
of Ground.

Ames, Iowa, Nov. 11.-Corn is
king in Iowa, but on about 5000
acres of Iowa soil the sugar beet is
this year making farmers a bigger
profit than they get out of two or
three crops of corn. Sugar beet
growing in some of the northeastern
counties of Iowa is no longer an ex-
pertinent, but a success" is the way
Dean Charles F. Curtiss of Iowa
State college puts it.
This year the 5000 acres of beets
in Bremen, Mitchell, Cerro Gordo,
Humboldt, Wright, Hardin and But
Ter counties will yield an average of
about twelve tons per acre. The Iowa
Sugar company factory at Waverly
will manufacture these into about
nine million to ten million pounds of
granulated sugar, about one-tenth Of
the amount sold over the counters of
Iowa grocery stores.
A flat price of So per ton is paid
for beets this year, delivered at the
shipping station. An average acre
is therefore bringing in about $50
gross. 1t is costing on an average
about SIS per acre for hired hand
labor and about SIS to SIT an acre
for the farmers labor and the seed
and fertilizer used. That makes
total IF about cox opd Iaavos m prNf+
per acre of about $25. A fifty or
sixty bushel crop of corn this season
will not make much more than $40
an acre profit, if that much.
Some northeastern Iowa farmers
are doing much better than that"
says Prof. w. H. Stevenson who with
three other station men visited the
sugar beet fields last week Owe
were on one forty-acre field belong
ing to Ellis & Sweet of Waverly,
whose yield is variously estimated at
! from sixteen to twenty-three tons per
acre. Taking the lowest estimate,
the gross receipts per acre from this
tract will be $SS."
Their beets will be delivered by
team to the factory and therefore
bring so cents a ton more. Mr.. Sweet
said that accurate bookkeeping show
! ed that the cost of the field would
run somewhere around $40 an acre.
That is higher than the average be-
cause more money was spent in Gull
tivation and fertilizing. But even
then the yield promises to pay prof
it of S45 to $4S an acre"
! After six years work in Iowa,
General Manager G.. B. Roseyear Of
the Iowa Sugar company, is ready
to say that Iowa can grow sugar
bees successfully with any state in
the country. In 1911, an unusually
dry year, the Iowa fields averaged
9.28 tons per acre; this year they
will average practically twelve tons.
Michigan's average for several years
is less than tons; California, 1912
tons; Colorado, 11.24 tons. Iowa's
beets will yield about 16 per cent
sugar this season; the very choicest
German and California beets test
about 10 or 10 per cent this year.
Iowa's beets are gradually increas-
ing in sugar content with better
methods of cultivation.
In the beginning there were many
failures, but the men who found
their soil and their disposition adap-
ted to the crop have succeeded regu-
larly. Some of them have been
growing beets six years and expect
to keep at it. In the beginning the
average acreage per farmer was only
three acres; now it is about twenty
three acres, indicating that the crop
pays the men who makes the effort
to grow it right.
The Iowa experiment station and
the United States bureau OF soils are
cooperating in a survey OF Bremen
county to disclose among other
things what soils are best suited 10
beet growing and how they should
be handled. E. B. Watson OF the
soils bureau and e. B. Howe OF the
college will spend several months IN
the soils and later analyz-
ing them.
Their work was started last Sat
urday and in the evening they and
prof. w. II. Stevenson and F. W..
Beckman of the college were guests
at a dinner given to local sugar grow
ers.