GROWING SUGAR BEETS IN CALIFORNIA. 3 
SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 
Briefly, these are the more important facts brought out in this 
study of 165 California sugar-beet farms: 
Tillable area in sugar beets: Los Angeles district, 68 per cent; 
Oxnard, 34 per cent; Salinas, 52 per cent. 
No definite cropping system is followed. Sugar beets are some- 
times grown on the same land for as many as 10 successive years. 
Other important crops are beans and barley. 
All available farm manure is spread upon beet land, but so little 
manure is available that only a small fraction of the beet acreage is 
manured each year. 
Average yields (1915-1916): Los Angeles, 14.52 tons per acre; 
Oxnard, 9.53 tons; Salinas, 15.59 tons. 
Cost per acre (1915-1916): Los Angeles, $67.11; Oxnard, $54.88 ; 
Salinas, $66.45. In general, as acreage increases cost per acre de- 
creases, while as yield increases cost per acre increases though cost 
per ton decreases. 
Labor constitutes 50 per cent of total cost of production; use of 
land, 35 per cent. 
Beet tops were fed on the maj ie of the farms in the Los Angeles 
and Oxnard areas. At Salinas 56 per cent of the growers plowed 
under the tops. The value of this by-product depends on the method 
of utilization. The highest value was put on the tops when used as 
feed. 
METHOD OF INVESTIGATION. 
Experienced enumerators visited the growers and obtained infor- 
mation as to the number of times the beet land was plowed, disked, har- 
rowed, rolled, etc., the size and kind of implements used, the size of 
the crew worked, and the time required to perform these operations, 
the season of the year when the work was done, and the materials 
used, such as manure, fertilizer, seed, and irrigation water. Each 
grower was also asked to outline his cropping system. In short, a 
complete record of the sugar-beet crop was obtained, and sufficient 
data on other farm crops and live stock to make possible a study 
of the entire farm business. Enough of these records were obtained 
so that variations in individual estimates were more or less equalized 
in the averages. A comparison of farmers’ estimates with actual 
figures taken from the books of the beet-sugar factories in two dis- 
tricts indicates the reliability of the results obtained by this method. 
(Table I.) Figures for the Los Angeles district are omitted, as a 
number of growers contracted a part of the acreage to one factory 
and the remainder to another. For similar reasons several growers 
in the other districts are not included in this table. It will be noted 
