4 
114 THE SUGAR INDUSTRY. 
to them, eat and die. These baits should be renewed several times at intervals of 
two to four days, according to the state of the weather and the abundance of the worms. 
BEET SEED PRODUCTION IN THE UNITED STATES. 
At least twenty pounds of seed per acre are required for planting sugar beets. 
At 12 to 20 cents per lb, this represents an investment of $2 to $4 per acre for seed 
alone. When from 3000 to 20,000 acres of land are planted to beets for each factory, 
according to its size, it will be seen that this beet-seed question is a most important 
one. Up to the present time the bulk of the beet seed used in America has been im- 
ported from Germany and France. 
Experiments at the department of agriculture’s sugar beet station at Schuyler, 
Neb, with later work by H. H. Nicholson at the Nebraska state experiment station, 
and the experience of our western beet growers, warrant the conclusion that Ameri- 
ca can produce its own beet seed. The Utah Sugar Co has 57 tons of mother beets 
laid by for planting for seed purposes early this spring, a sample of this lot being 
illustrated on Page 32. They are packed in dry sand and kept at a low temperature 
to prevent sprouting. These people are now raising quite a large amount of their 
own seed, have met with great success, and expect by 1898 to cease importing beet 
seed into Utah. Of course it is very necessary for those who are experimenting in 
raising beet seed to try small quantities of every variety that comes to their notice. 
Nicholson truly says that ‘‘We cannot build up a great sugar industry, stable and in- 
dependent, until we have all its absolute requirements in and on our own home soil. 
We must be free from all possible danger of having our seed supply tampered with, 
and we must develop varieties of beets adapted to our soil and climatic conditions.’’ 
Prof Nicholson considered this matter quite fully in his address to the Nebraska 
beet sugar association, November, ’97, from which we quote the following: 
The serious difficulty and the great danger—-danger to the industry as a whole— 
in attempting to grow and use our own seed, lies in the lack of proper, I may be par- 
doned for saying the lack of scientific, selection of parent beets. In this question, of 
the selection of mothers, is the key to the whole situation. Itis a purely scientific 
question—a question that has been reduced to an exact science by the great breeders 
and seed growers of France and Germany. If we would not meet disaster, we should 
sit at their feet and patiently learn the details of procedure. 
If, for example, we select this year our best beets—those that will average 16 per 
cent in sugar—for seed, we will undoubtedly obtain very satisfactory results when 
this seed is planted. By continuing this process year after year we will soon have 
difficulty in finding 16 per cent beets—the average sugar content and purity will be- 
gin to drop, in accordance with a natural law that all animal and plant life, especially 
those cases where special features have been artificially developed, tend to return to 
lower forms. 
To keep ou” beets up to a high grade, then, we must keep introducing props and 
supports in the way of careful selection in regard to specific points. This introduces 
into seed. growing the elements of science and of expense and lifts the business into the 
position of a specialty, to be followed only by those content to make it a lifework. 
It is a question, perhaps, whether there is yet a sufficient demand for seed in this 
country to justify the specialist or the capitalist, or both, to enter upon the profession 
