6 BULLETIN" 721, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
For several years the Office of Sugar-Plant Investigations, jointly 
with the Office of Farm Management and independently, has been 
studying the agronomic conditions found in each of the existing and 
in some of the prospective sugar-beet centers. It is the purpose of 
this paper to discuss the conditions which have been brought out in 
these studies and to point out in a general way the factors that are 
favorable and those that are unfavorable for the production of sugar 
beets. The primary object of this paper, therefore, is to give a gen- 
eral survey of the beet-sugar industry and to encourage the more gen- 
eral application of those principles and practices which make for 
better returns to the grower and to discourage those practices which 
tend to reduce the yields and quality of sugar beets and of other 
crops and to unbalance the relation between crop production and the 
kind, number, and quality of the live stock on the beet farms, the ul- 
timate object being an increased production of sugar and a stabiliza- 
tion of the beet-sugar industry. 
SOIL. 
Almost any fertile soil capable of producing good crops of other 
kinds will, if properly handled, produce good sugar beets. More de- 
pends upon the physical condition of the soil and the way in which it 
is handled than upon the so-called kind or type of soil. Extremely 
sandy soil or soil of a decidedly gravelly type is not usually satis- 
factory for sugar-beet growing. 
Raw soil. — Generally speaking, raw soil or new soil does not pro- 
duce as large yields of sugar beets as may be obtained from soil that 
has been under cultivation for some time. In recent years much new 
soil has been brought under cultivation through the use of the sugar 
beets; this in a measure has had a tendency to reduce the average 
yield of sugar beets in this country. The argument in favor of grow- 
ing sugar beets on new soil is that this crop will bring the raw soil 
under control and place it in good tilth for other crops more quickly 
than almost any other crop now produced on a large scale on Ameri- 
can farms. It must be expected, therefore, that so long as new sugar- 
beet territories are being opened in the partially developed sections 
of the United States this factor, tending to keep down the average 
yield of beet roots, will be effective. Also in many of the older sugar- 
beet sections in which the growing of sugar beets is being extended 
from year to year, whereby new lands are being brought under culti- 
vation, this factor will be more or less effective in holding down the 
average yield. In those sections where sugar beets have been grown 
for many years, as, for example, in Utah, and in which a minimum 
acreage of new soil is being brought in from year to year, the average 
yield of beets per acre is strikingly above the average for the entire 
