242 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



sorghum juice than from southern cane, on account of the numerous foreign 

 materials, such as gum ghicose and particles of crushed stalk which exist in 

 large amount in the juice as it comes from the mill. This difficulty has stood 

 in the way for years past. Every one tasted the sugar and recognized its being 

 there, analysis verified it, but being led astray by the analogy of maple sap, 

 thinking it was only necessary to boil it down thick enough, it would then 

 crystallize, we have left one of the most, if not the most, valuable sugar 

 producing plants to waste its sweetness on the desert air. This is not an 

 unheard-of proceeding, for during the first twenty-five years of sugar-cane 

 growing in Louisiana failures were as numerous as successes, and until 

 improved methods of boiling and defecating were introduced, the growing of 

 cane was considered a dangerous financial venture. 



But with sorghum the sugar is there, and has been now extracted in large 

 amount in the condition which these excellent samples indicate. It is a pure 

 crystalline sugar, devoid of grassy taste, and of such quality that, used on the 

 table or in the kitchen, is found equal in every respect to the southern sugar. 

 It pays to produce it — let the figures given by the Champaign sugar works and 

 their increase of capital stock, bear witness. 



Unlike the southern cane it can be profitably grown in any portion of the 

 Union where corn can be produced. It is not a tender crop; it will stand 

 more frost than corn without injury. It makes the best of forage — fed care- 

 fully either in the green state or dried, it is greedily consumed by cattle and 

 horses. In Tennessee farmers fatten their mules and stock on the shoots sent 

 up after the first crop has been removed for sugar. 



Sorghum requires very little if any stable manure; it is spoiled for sugar 

 and syrup by a heavy manuring. When grown on land heavily manured both 

 syrup and sugar have a saline taste. 



The sugar industry from sorghum is on the road to certain success. 

 Bounties are offered in many States for each ton of cane grown or pound of 

 sugar produced. Michigan is not behind. At the last session, the Legislature 

 passed an act exempting from taxation all property used in the manufacture of 

 sugar for a period of five years from January 1, 18S2, and offering a bounty of 

 two dollars for every hundred pounds of sugar made. The President of our 

 State Agricultural Society calls attention to the subject in his annual address, 

 and recommends the offering of a prize for the best samples of sugar 

 exhibited. 



Let some of Michigan's farmer capitalists unite to start a sugar factory, 

 and a new industry will reveal itself of which we can now have but a slight 

 idea. The one hundred millions which we annually expend abroad for sugar 

 will be retained at home, and another vexed topic in political economy will be 

 laid in its final resting place, for we shall be able to say we grow our own 

 sugar as we now say we grow our own wheat. 



The subject of the profitable production of sugar and syrup from sorghum 

 having been brought to notice, and the legislature considering it of sufficient 

 practical importance to warrant investigation, money was appropriated at the 

 last session, and the work of investigation committed to the Agricultural 

 College. 



Two crops of sorghum have been raised and worked up. The firdt in 1881 ; 

 the second during the past season. I will discuss first the 



CROP OF ISSJ. 



A clear understanding of what has been done can be best conveyed by giving 



