174 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES 



of the state to the growth of the sugar beet and the manufacture 

 of beet sugar. The vast area of rich, deep, loamy and easily-worked 

 soils, which afford the plant deep rooting, free expansion and large 

 yield of rich beets; the equable climate, which insures ample sun- 

 action, freedom from low temperature, and an almost continuous 

 growing season through the year for a hardy plant like the beet, and 

 thus provides for sugar factories a maximum working season with- 

 out protection of the rich, raw material from freezing these are lo- 

 cal advantages for beet growing and sugar making the importance of 

 which it is difficult to overestimate. There are also many incidental 

 advantages and benefits in ground which does not freeze and in fac- 

 tories where the absence of freezing temperature makes it unneces- 

 sary to build for protection of men, materials and machinery, ex- 

 cept from heat and rain. 



Ten beet-sugar factories in California produced, in 1911-12, 

 161,300 tons of sugar, from 99,545 acres of beets. Large as this 

 quantity is, it is small compared with the possible production in 

 California, as there are seven hundred and fifty thousand acres 

 perfectly adapted to the raising of sugar beets. Allowing for proper 

 rotation of crops, about two hundred thousand acres would be avail- 

 able each year .-capable of producing two million five hundred thou- 

 sand tons of beets and three hundred and fifty thousand tons of 

 sugar. 



The ten factories cited above are located as follows : Alvarado, 

 Alameda county; Los Alamitos and Huntington Beach, Los An- 

 geles county; Spreckels, ^Monterey county; Betteravia, San Luis 

 Obispo county; Chino, San Bernardino county; Oxnard, Ventura 

 county; Hamilton City, Glenn county; Anaheim and Santa Ana, 

 Orange county. Several other factories were not in operation dur- 

 ing 1911-1912. 



Comparative statistics show that the proportion of saccharine 

 is greater in the beets grown here than in any other locality, whether 

 in Europe or America. The plant itself becomes a more active 

 worker and extracts more sugar from California soil and sunshine 

 than it does elsewhere. 



Situations and Soils. Of the ten factories cited nine are in the 

 coast region south of San Francisco, and one in the Sacramento 

 valley, but the large area noted as adapted to sugar beet production 

 is obtained by computation of our valley acreage. For the most 

 economical production of uniformly good beets, fairly level fields 



