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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 irri- 
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 
