332 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



TONS OF BEETS PER ACRE. 



An effort was made to find the yield of sugar beets in different locali- 

 ties in the State by sending out blanks giving directions to measure off 

 sixty-six feet in the row where these rows were eighteen inches apart, 

 to count the number of beets, and to give the weight in pounds of the beets 

 after removing the necks and tops. The estimate of the pounds per acre 

 was to be made by multiplying the weight of the beets in this sixty-six 

 feet of row by 435.6; by dividing this product by two thousand we would 

 find the number of tons of beet roots to the acre. Many persons seem 

 to have reported the number of pounds gathered from the whole plot, 

 instead of the pounds from a row of sixty-six feet. The calculation 

 shows some astonishing results in tons per acre, ranging from five to 

 three hundred and forty-three tons. Requests for revised estimates have 

 been in most cases without success. The report of large yields above 

 twenty tons to the acre must be viewed with suspicion and the estimates 

 considered very doubtful. In a large number of cases, however, great 

 care has been employed to give accurate results, and for this care the 

 people of the State are grateful. 



From the results of careful measurements at the Station farm, and 

 from the results of many careful and accurate experiments elsewhere, 

 it would not be safe to place the range of yields per acre for 1897 higher 

 than from twelve to eighteen tons. 



IS THE SUGAR BEET AN EXHAUSTING CROP ? 



Before the farmer will make a radical change in his crop rotation, 

 by bringing in the sugar beet, he will naturally ask what the influence 

 of the new crop on the fertility of his farm will be. When the entire 

 croi) is removed from the field it is unquestionably exhausting, carrying 

 off a large amount of fertilizing material, especially potash and phos- 

 phates. The leaves and crown contain a relatively larger amount of fer- 

 tilizing materials than does the same weight of roots. To prevent unneces- 

 sary depletion, it is snid that in certain districts the manufacturers 

 require the farmers not to remove the leaves from the field, unless they 

 are used as fodder and their fertilizing ingredients thus returned to 

 the soil as manure. If this is done, and the beet pulp or residue after 

 extracting the sugar is used as food for cattle, and in this way returned 

 to the soil, there is absolutely no loss of fertilizing materials, and no 

 farm crop so little exhausts the soil as sugar beets. Where there is 

 nothing sold off the farm but the sugar, the crop removes no fertilizing 

 material whatever. While sugar is valuable as food, it contains no ele- 

 ment of fertility, no potash, lime, phosphate, nitrogen or other manurial 

 material. It consists of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, the elements 

 taken up by the plant from the air, directly or indirectly; in selling the 

 sugar, therefore, the farmer is selling wind and water only. In France 

 the raising of sugar beets for the factory, where everything but the sugar 

 was kept on the farm, has resulted in increasing the fertility of the soil, 

 and has promoted the agricultural prosperity of the district. The beet 



