864 



THE IREIGATIOjST AGE. 



ARID AGRICULTURE 



BY 

 B. C. BUFFUM, M. S. 



Manager of the Wyoming Plant and Seed Breeding Company, 



Worland. Former Professor of Agriculture in the v/ni- 



versity of Wyoming and the Colorado Agricultural 



College, and Director of the Wyoming 



Agricultural Experiment 



Station. 



Prof. B. C. Rliffum. 



The Sugar Beet and Its Culture. 



The luxuries of yesterday be- 

 come the necessities of tomorrow. 

 The main business of the farmer 

 is to supply the world's necessi- 

 ties. 



Beets a Direct Food. 



Sugar beets may be grown for 

 two general purposes; first, as a 

 direct food for stock and man; 

 second, for the manufacture of 

 sugar. Beets have been grown 

 many years for stock feed, but 

 the sugar beet for manufacture 

 become a new crop, where factories are established. 



The value of the beet as a supplementary food for 

 stock is something we have been slow to learn. Even 

 after the sugar has been extracted, what remains is worth 

 enough for food to make the by-products valuable. 



Special Culture Required. 



Where beets are properly raised for the production of 

 sugar, their culture differs at almost every point from 

 the culture of alfalfa, wheat and potatoes, which have been 

 our staple crops. 



The high sugar content and purity of the sugar beet 

 are artificial characteristics produced by years of special 

 cultivation, selection and plant breeding. This has given 

 rise to "kinks" in beet culture, which are not only im- 

 portant but essential if we make the value of the crop 

 sufficient to meet the expense of producing it and provide 

 a profit. 



Beet Growing Intensive. 



Raising sugar beets is intensive farming. They cannot 

 be successfully produced except by intensive methods. 

 On this account sugar beet culture introduced in a com- 

 munity which has generally practiced extensive cropping, 

 means learning something new. The farmer must put 

 aside the idea that his experience with other crops will 

 enable him to grow sugar beets successfully. He must 

 follow the experience of those who have long practiced 

 beet culture if he hopes for success. 



The German who said that the Americans could not 

 grow sugar beets because they would not get down on 

 their knees to hoe, has given us some idea of the essen- 

 tial difference between beet culture and the culture of 

 our ordinary crops. While there is a right method of 

 beet culture, undoubtedly general practice may be some- 

 what modified by the peculiar conditions of each locality. 

 Experience in other places is valuable, but not always 

 infallible. 



Adapting Crops Important. 



We have much to gain by creating races and varieties 

 of plants which will be fully at home and adapted to our 

 soil, climate and system of irrigation. It has taken long 

 years of careful breeding and cultivation to produce the 

 sugar beet of today. The amount of sugar it contains 

 has been quadrupled and other solids eliminated until 

 it has great purity. At the same time the beet has taken 

 on desirable shape and size. To grow them properly the 

 farmer must carefully, honestly and persistently follow 

 out rules of beet culture, perhaps with some intelligent 

 modification. 



It will probably take thoughtful farmers three years 

 to learn to grow beets. You may make a good profit 

 before you learn how to grow the beets, but your profit 

 will not be as large as after a little experience. 

 Average Crops Not Profitable. 



An average crop of anything is not highly profitable. 



The man who gets only an average crop should be well 

 satisfied if he makes expenses, and should rejoice over 

 an additional 3 per cent gain on his investment. The 

 average crop of potatoes for the United States is about 

 04 bushels per acre, say 38 sacks. In our best potato 

 districts under irrigation the cost of raising an acre of 

 potatoes is about $l!0. There are not many farmers in 

 the West who would go into their fields rejoicing, to 

 harvest less than 38 sacks of potatoes per acre. 



If the crop of sugar beets averages only 10 tons per 

 acre, worth an average of $4.50 per ton, there may or 

 may not be a cash profit in raising them. It will depend 

 on whether it has .:ost $30 or $50 to grow and market 

 the beets. Good farmers in beet-raising sections will 

 probably produce more than twenty tons and possibly 

 twice that ; n some cases with little increase in the cost. 

 Where this occurs they will bring magnificent profits and 

 boom the bank account. 



The main idea is. of course, the immediate money 

 value of the crop. While this part of the reward will, 

 undoubtedly, be highly pleasing to the man who properly 

 grows his beets, it is not the only thing to be gained from 

 beet farming. 



Beets and Prosperity. 



Where sugar beets are grown for a factory, producing 

 them, more than the raising of almost any other crop, 

 brings prosperity to a community. This is not due alone 

 to the money reward to the grower. There are several 

 ways in which growing beets differ from the growing 

 of other crops in the ultimate result to our agriculture. 



Money Put Into Circulation. 



First The more money handled in a -way which puts 

 it into wide circulation, in any business, the greater is 

 the commercial and social activity. This is the reason 

 that manufacturing and trade centers are prosperous. 

 Growing beets requires intensive cultivation. If a farmer 

 raises 10 acres of sugar beets a ; they should be managed, 

 it means the expenditure of $300 to $500, much of which 

 is paid for labor. In a beet-growing community everyone 

 is employed, everyone has some money to spend, and 

 real estate, the merchant, the barber, the church and the 

 school respond to the magic. The establishment of suc- 

 cessful factories has always resulted in improved con- 

 ditions. 



Something to Be Learned. 



Second There is an important educational feature 

 about growing beets. The farmer who raises them learns 

 something new about agriculture. Some of the under- 

 lying principles of his high calling are forcibly brought 

 to mind. He has known in a general way that plants 

 are sensitive to con-iitions of soil and climate. He has 

 read Mark Twain's way of putting it, when he makes 

 Puddin' Head Wilson say: "Training is everything; the 

 peach was once a bitter almond, and the cauliflower is 

 nothing but cabbage with a college education." 



He is now becoming acquainted with a sugar beet 

 which was once an annual weed growing on the seacoast, 

 and the things he learns are too numerous to mention. 



Profit From Smaller Areas. 



The bringing of some of this land under intensive 

 cultivation to gain larger profits from smaller areas is 

 a most important lesson for the irrigation farmer. We 

 will have more people, more happiness and more general 

 prosperity when we have fully reached the realization 

 that more of everything we work for can be obtained 

 from an irrigated farm of twenty acres properly man- 

 aged than from an hundred or a thousand acres which 

 keeps a man both skin poor and penniless. This is one 

 of the last and hardest lessons the arid land farmer, who 

 comes from regions where the more land the more wealth 

 principle prevails, has to learn. 



(To be continued) 



BORAX IN THE UNITED STATES. 



California produces all the borax mined in the United 

 States and is now supplying nearly all the domestic de- 

 mand. The principal mine is in the Death Valley region, 

 in Inyo County. Another mine is in Los Angeles County. 



The mineral mined is colemanite, or borate of lime, 

 most of which is shipped crude to Alameda, Cal., or Bayonne, 

 N. J., for refining. 



