GROWING SUGAR BEETS IN THE BILLINGS REGION. 25 



his crop each year. The limit to the supply of available water must 

 also be known, and the water must be so used that it will be properly 

 distributed. The fact remains that the water must be used when it 

 is delivered in the ditch. It may not always seem best for any given 

 farm, but as there are many farms under the ditch each must take 

 the water when it is available. 



Irrigation usually proceeds day and night when the water is 

 available, the average man putting in long hours in the operation. 

 Some men turn the water on alfalfa fields at night, but most men set 

 the water on long rows of beets and let it run all night. This sort 

 of work demands that the water be set to running just before dark 

 at night and changed as soon as day breaks in the morning. Many 

 of the men stay in the field 14 or 15 hours a day when irrigating. 



As already stated, irrigation is very distinctly an operation that is 

 different for each farm. Some men can irrigate 5 or 10 acres per 

 day and do it better, more efficiently, and easier than they could i rri- 

 gate 2 acres on another farm. The head of water and the lay of the 

 land cause part of this variation. It pays to irrigate carefully and 

 not hastily. One should prepare his land so that there will be no 

 low places where water will collect and stand. 



The average labor cost of irrigation in the area studied is 61 cents 

 per acre per irrigation ; this means that the average man can irrigate 

 about 4 acres in 12 hours. Four or five acres per day of about 12 to 

 15 hours can be covered when the water is running about all the 

 time, day and night. The average man irrigated his beets 2.4 times ; 

 26 men irrigated once, 168 irrigated twice, 89 irrigated three times, 

 and 14 irrigated four times. The available data comparing the crop 

 yields and the number of irrigations failed to show any manifest 

 correlation. In order to form definite conclusions upon this subject, 

 more detailed information as to time and number of water applica- 

 tions would be necessary, and types of soil and other considerations 

 would have to be studied much more closely than was possible for 

 the men gathering the data of this survey. Very little is known by 

 the average farmer as to the quantity of water applied to each field 

 or the quantity wasted, as he has no measuring devices for individ- 

 ual fields. The water is measured out of the main canal, but after 

 that the farmer makes no accurate measurements. 



These studies, made in 1915, show that detailed information was 

 gathered from 301 farms upon which 8,745 acres of sugar beets were 

 irrigated, the man labor expended upon each acre being 7.43 hours, 

 at a cost of $1.49. 



Four men did not irrigate their beets. These in all cases were 

 beets on seeped or subirrigated lands. About 99 per cent of the total 

 area planted to beets was irrigated. The nonirrigated lands of the 



