292 



THE AGRICULTUKAL NEWS 



September 22, 1917. 



FOOD CROPS. 



PREPARING SWEET POTATOES FOR 

 MEAL. 

 In view of the likelihood of there being shortage in the 

 supply of imported foodstuffs, general interest has been 

 taken in the West Indies in increasing the production of 

 locally grown vegetables to take the place of imported foods. 

 As a result, there has been in most of the islands a consid- 

 erable extension of the cultivation of sweet potatoes. With 

 the expectation, therefore, of much larger crops of sweet 

 potatoes, larger, it is to be hoped, than to meet demands of 

 the moment, there is a great need of some method of storing 

 the roots. A disadvantage with thi- crop is that in its 

 natural condition it can only be kept sound for a short time. 

 Experiments have been made from time to time wich the 

 object of removing thi.s disadvantage, and the conversion of 

 the roots into meal ha-i hitherto met the sit"ation to a limited 

 extent. The difficulty is in the slicing of them, and drying 

 them adequately, in order to produce chips or meal suffi- 

 ciently free of moisture to be capable of storage for a longer 

 period than the untrented roots. 



Ste<: 



''*^k.^^>:'M.! 



Fig, 1. c 



ITTKi; .\I).\PTED A.S SWEET l'OT.\T0 



SLICEP>. 



On a recent visit to Antigua, Sir Francis Watts 

 unearthed and had photographed a machine which had 

 been devi.-ied by Mr. A St. George S^ioouer inaiy years 

 ago for the purpose of slicing sweet, potatoes With thi.s 

 machine, and a simple drying device, Mr. Spooner had 

 carried out experiments on sweet potatoes. The photographs 

 together with ilr. Spooner's notes on hi.- experiment are here 

 reproduced as of interest, particularly at the present time, 

 when the need of being able to store sweet potatoes is a ques- 

 tion of some impoitance. !Mr. Spooner writes: — 



'The autumn of 1.S98 was a singularly fivourable one for 

 the growth of sweet potatoes in Antigua and early in the 

 following year, when the crop was ripe, the quantity of 

 potatoes for sale in the island was such that it was impossible 

 to sell them at all. At this time I turned my attention to 

 preserving them in the shape of meal for stock or human 

 food. After a few unsuccessful experiments with pulping, 

 etc., I found that the best way of doing this was to cut the 



potatoes into very thin slices, after scrubbing them thoroughly 

 clean in water, with a hard scrubbing brush, to remove 

 every particle of dirt, and then to spread the slices on sheets 

 of galvanized iron or wire web, in the sun. The slices 

 dried in six or eight hours in a hot sun, providtd they were 

 not thicker than ,'^-inch. The dried slices were put into 

 old flour barrels, and when enough of them had been collected 

 they were ground into a fine meal in a steam-driven grinding 

 machine that I have imported for experimental purposes. 



'I found that slicing with a knife was too slow, expen- 

 sive, and unreliable, and so devised a slicing machine made 

 by filling in with wood the fly wheel of an old chaflF cutter, 

 and just leaving an opening of about ^^jy inch letween the 

 edges of the knives and the edge of the wood filling, or to be 

 more explicit perhaps, making the edges of the knives 

 project about ,V-inch forward of the plane of the wood filling, 

 so that the knives wou'd only cut slices of this uniform 

 thickness. A wooden hopper was placed at the knife side 

 of this wheel, after ihe fashion of a mangel pulper, and 

 filled with p'lta'oes, the weight of which kept the lower 

 ones against the knives as they o-ime round. With this 

 .single machine a barrel of potatoes could lie cut into slices 



Fk;. 2. tllAKF CUTTEi; AI>.\I'TE1i as SWEET POTATO 

 .•^LirEK. 



in about a ipiaiter of an hour by on- person It took about 

 3 barrels of dried siice> to mike 1 barrel of meal, and 

 a barrel of meal weighed about I (JO lb The grinding 

 mill I have, would turn nut a barrel of meal in less than ten 

 minutes, and the ei pense was very trifling, the machine being 

 driven off the fly wheel of one of the vacuum pan engines in 

 the sugar factory. 



'In all 1 made several tons of this meal, which I used 

 after crop for feeding mules and cattle with satisfactory 

 results. ■' 



'The labourers eat this meal readily, bur, sty that it is 

 "very rich". I fancy that in the form of "pap", the only way 

 they tried to cook it, they found they got ".stodged" before 

 they had eaten as much as they knew would be about the 

 capacity of their stomachs. I think if they baked the meal 

 with water into cakes they would have been more successful. 

 I have eaten the meal in .several forms, and find it a palatable 

 and satisfactory form of food. 



