236 The Sugar- Beet in America 



value of the farms studied in this survey were above the 

 ordinary beet land is seen from the fact that the yields 

 reported average in the neighborhood of one-third 

 higher than the yields for states as reported from other 

 sources.^ 



In addition to the rental cost, there should be added 

 from 3 to 10 per cent of the costs mentioned for taxes, 

 depreciation on machinery, and other incidentals. Then 

 about 6 or 7 per cent of the cost as given should be added 

 to account for crop failures or acreages not harvested, 

 if the true cost is to be found. Keeping this in mind when 

 studymg the gross returns from the crop and the yield to 

 the acre represented in columns two and three of the chart, 

 it will be seen that beets on the better class of land in 

 most of the states yield a profit under normal conditions. 

 It is evident, however, that the true net returns are not 

 so great as one is sometimes led to believe from incom- 

 plete costs. The cost data are not complete enough to 

 draw satisfactory conclusions, because we do not know 

 whether the land represented in the high-producing states 

 — Utah, Idaho, California, and Colorado — was on the 

 200- to 300-dollar-an-acre land that rents for fifteen to 

 twenty dollars an acre each year, or whether the low- 

 producing states represented the 100- to 200-dollar-an- 

 acre land drawing a rent of six to ten dollars an acre. 

 But it appears that the profit to the acre from the crop 

 increases rather strikingly as the yield increases above a 

 minimum point. The larger yields in the West permit 

 more care to be given economically to the crop as the 

 yield increases; or rather, the high wages and other 

 » U. S. Dept. of Agri. Yearbook (1913), p. 447. 



