Cost of Producing Beets — 233 
machinery and the application of scientific methods to 
the farm. It will also be necessary to raise sugar-beets 
in the parts of the country best adapted to their growth. 
It is on the farm that this greater efficiency must be 
sought, since the price paid for the beets is the chief item 
of expense involved in the cost of beet-sugar. 
DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING COSTS 
It is often asserted that beet producers are receiving 
abnormal profits for their crops; and about equally often 
the beet-growers contend that there is no profit in raising 
beets, or that if all costs were considered the crop is 
ordinarily produced at a loss. Data to prove either con- 
tention can be gathered from both large and small farms. 
In some communities only a very few farmers can pro- 
duce beets at a profit when the average for a number of 
years is taken. Naturally, in such places, beets become 
unpopular and conclusive results can be given to show 
that beets are unprofitable; in a more favored locality, 
the opposite can be shown as readily. 
It is highly desirable to find unbiased results that will 
show the true condition for the sugar-beet producers of 
the country as a whole, for each locality, and for each 
individual farm. At present such data have not been 
determined satisfactorily. Much valuable material has 
been compiled to show the costs, but since many factors 
are unfortunately left out of most of these compilations, 
they do not represent the true cost. Results in this re- 
gard, as reported from experiments on a small scale, 
generally show high yields and a high labor cost, indicat- 
t 
