SUGAR PRODUCTION IN U. S. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES. 61 



pounds in 1910. The total consumption of sugar for that year was 

 115,529 tons. A large quantity of the sugar consumed in Switzer- 

 land is used in the confectionery, condensed milk, and chocolate in- 

 dustries, and is afterwards exported. The exports of these products 

 m 1913 were 44,708 tons for condensed milk, 18,538 for chocolate, and 

 1,658 for confectionery. 



BRITISH INDIA. 



CANE SUGAR. 



The area of British India used for sugar cane is in the northern 

 part, in the valleys of the Ganges and Indus Rivers. The United 

 Provinces of Agra and Oudh contain one-half of the area under cane 

 and produce one-half of the sugar. The Provinces of Punjab, Bihar, 

 and Bengal contain the greater portion of the remainder of the area 

 under cane. Cane is also grown in the Provinces of Bombay in the 

 west and Madras in the south. The sugar-cane areas of India are 

 like those of the United States in the sense that they lie mostly outside 

 of the tropics and are subject to frost. Sugar cane is a tropical plant 

 and thrives best in a uniformly warm climate where there is an 

 abundance of water supply and in an alluvial soil retentive of mois- 

 ture. These conditions exist in the valleys of the Ganges and Indus 

 Rivers, with their numerous irrigation canals. In the south, where 

 climatic conditions are better suited to this crop, the other physical 

 conditions are less favorable. In this way the sugar-cane cultivation 

 of India has been driven from the tropics and thrust northward close 

 to the limit of cane cultivation. These conditions, together with the 

 backward methods of cultivation and manufacture of sugar, are 

 chiefly responsible for the low yield of sugar per acre in India. The 

 estimated yield of cane per acre on the best land is 20 tons, but the 

 primitive methods of extracting the sugar leave about one-half of the 

 sugar in the cane. The fields are widely scattered and so far apart 

 that the cost of transportation from field to factory forbids the large 

 central sugar factory as used in other sugar-cane countries. 



The total area under cultivation in India during the decade 

 1903-4 to 1912-13 was 257,000,000 acres, of which 2,279,859, or a little 

 less than 1 per cent, was used for cane. Nearly one year is required 

 for cane to mature in India. It is planted in February, March, and 

 A.pril and harvested in December and January. The average yield 

 of sugar per acre has been about 1 ton, but slightly exceeded that 

 figure in recent years, and amounted to 2,290 pounds in 1912-13 and 

 to 2,011 in 1913-14. The cane grown in the United Provinces yields 

 from 1,500 to 3,200 pounds >f raw sugar (guf ) per acre. The yield 

 of sugar per acre varies considerably in the other Province, from 



