INDIRECT BENEFITS OF SUGAE-BEET CULTURE. 15 



locality. This agriculturist and his assistants are constantly traveling over the sugar- 

 beet producing district of this particular factory, advising farmers particularly in the 

 growth of beets, and generally in the production of all other crops. They are as 

 much interested incidentally in the handling of the lands producing other crops as 

 they are particularly the one in charge. It is these other lands that will produce 

 sugar beets next year. 



A sugar-factory district is an " extension course" in agriculture to every farmer in 

 the district, whether he be growing beets or not. It could not be conceived, with 

 Buch influences constantly in operation, that the sugar industry is not exerting a 

 potent influence most favorable in production of all crops. 



If the above-mentioned truths, no truer to-day than they have been 

 at any time during the past century, had been drilled into the head 

 of every farmer boy at the little red schoolhouse, as they are and 

 have been in Europe since the time of Napoleon, we long since would 

 have been producing our own sugar at home and, because of our 

 superior soil, climate, and numerous other advantages, our acreage 

 yields of all other crops to-day would be the envy instead of the ridicule 

 of European thinkers. As it is, we have missed the mark completely. 

 As a rule, our farmers have taken the shadow for the substance. 

 "So many tons of beets per acre at so much per ton" is the first thing 

 considered in America and the last thing in Europe, and if sugar 

 beets failed to yield a greater direct profit than do other crops, the 

 average American farmer abandons the culture and applies himself 

 to growing the more easily produced cereals, while the European 

 farmer will grow beets at a considerable direct loss lather than to 

 abandon the culture, well knowing that he will far more than make 

 up any losses on the beet crop by the increased yields of other crops 

 with which, for three years, he follows beets. It unquestionably 

 is true that, because of the exceedingly low world price of sugar, 

 Europe long ago would have ceased to produce sugar for export, if 

 not f or t home consumption, had it not been that beet culture so 

 greatly increases the yield of all other crops. 



Instead of growing beets on the same soil year after year, the 

 European farmer rotates them with other crops, sowing them on the 

 same soil as infrequently as possible, in order to benefit the maximum 

 area, never losing sight of or sacrificing the advantages to accrue 

 for the following three years, while tens of thousands of American 

 farmers, sowing beets only for the direct returns, sow them on the 

 same soil year after year, thereby not only losing the greatest profit 

 beet culture affords, but gradually wearing out their soils as they 

 surely will be worn out by cropping them constantly to any one thing 

 year after year without rotation. 



In every community where sugar beets are produced, there are 

 farmers who, by personal experience, have learned the truths which 

 Napoleon proclaimed a century ago, and their number is increasing 

 yearly, but there are thousands who still miss the main feature in the 

 culture of sugar beets as thoroughly as one would miss it who said that 

 a farmer painted Ms barn red in order to pro vide a red building to gaze at. 

 With the European farmer the main purpose in planting sugar beets is 

 to increase the yield of his other crops by rotation with the" beets, just 

 as the piimary purpose of painting a barn reel or yellow is to preserve 

 the wood. With the European farmer, the direct returns from a crop 

 of beets are as truly an incident as is the color of the barn. 



The following limited selection of letters and reports received from 

 farmers located in beet districts from Ohio on the east to Washington 



