Report on the. Agriculture of Belgium. 
51 
it is to their interest to produce as lieavy a crop as possible. 
Tlrerefore, on the one hantl, we have the farmer tr}'ing: to apply 
secretly guano and other stimulants, and on the other the manu- 
facturer keeping up a system of espionage to prevent his doing 
so. Generally, however, the farmer gets the best of it, because 
so many " sucreries " have recently been established that amongst 
the manufacturers there is great competition to secure the roots. 
What manufacturers prefer is to have the sugar-beet grown 
after a well-manured white crop, such as wheat, to have little 
or no manure put on the stubbles, and no artificial manure 
applied in any case. But there is every possible deviation from 
this course ; and in one instance we found sugar-beet, well 
manured with dung and guano, taken after clover sown in wheat. 
The crop of roots was, of course, heavy, from 20 to 25 tons 
per acre, and they would fetch I65. per ton, the pulp to be 
returned at a certain price per ton. 
So far we have described only the practice of the farmei'. 
We now come, in the natural order of things, to the disposal of 
the crop. The sugar-manufacturer is generally a large farmer 
in one of two senses : either he has an ordinary farm of con- 
siderable size, or he annually rents land from other farmers — 
preferably a wheat-stubble — for the purpose of growing sugar- 
beet on it. The reason is obvious : the factory cannot begin 
work until the end of September at the earliest, and all the roots 
are disposed of by early spring. The manufacturer must, there- 
fore, find employment for a large proportion of his best workmen 
during the summer, and the easiest wav of doing this profitably 
and keeping them together is by cultivating a considerable extent 
of land. If the manufacturer hires land for the year, the price 
which he pays for it includes the winter and spring ploughing 
and other preparations of the land for sowing. Sowing, weeding, 
hoeing, and harvesting, are done by the factory people ; and the 
tops and leaves are left as the perquisites of the farmer. The 
roots that are bought from other farmers are delivered topped at 
a certain price per ton, either unconditionally, or on condition 
that a certain proportional weight, generally about 15 per cent., 
shall be returned as pulp at a certain price. The price of roots 
this year (1869) was said to reach 1/. per ton without pulp in 
some districts, and about IG5. per ton, on the average, on 
condition that 1 5 per cent, in weight was returned to the farmer 
at about 12^. per ton. 
The manufacture of sugar, like that of linen, does not come 
W'ithin the province of an agricultural report ; but there are one 
or two points connected with it that have an agricultural 
bearing. When the roots arrive at the factory they are either 
stored in long "buries," as we keep mangolds, hxxt without 
E 2 
