GROWING SUGAR BEETS IN CALIFORNIA. 37 
• of farm practices. Thus, though the values of the several items in 
dollars and cents have increased since these records were obtained, 
the amounts of labor and material used have not changed, and the 
actual cost of production for a given region in a given season can 
be ascertained by substituting current prices for those that prevailed 
when this study was made. It should be borne in mind that the cost 
figures given herewith are presented solely for the purpose of com- 
parison. 
The computations are made to apply to the entire beet acreage. 
Thus all averages are weighted, and the cost per acre in the respec- 
tive areas represents the cost per acre of producing 7,711.5 acres of 
beets in the Los Angeles district, 2,811 acres in the Oxnard area, and 
3,616 acres at Salinas. 
LABOR. 
As has been previously stated, the production of sugar beets neces- 
sitates a great amount of both man labor and horse labor. A con- 
siderable portion of the man labor is crowded into two distinct 
periods. The first period covers blocking and thinning, and hoeing, 
while the other comes at the harvest time, when the pulling, topping, 
loading, and hauling are done. So much labor is necessary during 
these periods that extra laborers must be hired to do the work. 
It is the general practice to hire most of this labor on a contract 
basis, paying a stipulated sum per acre or per ton. Such labor is 
frequently called " contract labor." Sometimes the same group of 
laborers will contract for all the hand work. This is the general 
practice in the Salinas area. In other sections there are sometimes 
two groups of workers. The first contracts the blocking and thin- 
ning, and hoeing, while the second takes care of the pulling, topping, 
and loading. 
The number of acres of beets that can be grown on the farm de- 
pends on the available supply of labor to do the contract work. In 
years when farm labor is scarce, considerable difficulty has been en- 
countered in getting the crop harvested. 
There is very little difference in the labor cost per acre between 
the Los Angeles district and the Oxnard district (Table XXIV). 
The labor cost at Salinas exceeds the labor cost in the other regions, 
but when reduced to the basis of cost per ton, the labor cost at Ox- 
nard is the largest. The difference is due entirely to the factor of 
yield. The smallest yield per acre, 9.53 tons, was realized in the 
Oxnard district. The labor cost alone ranged from $2.13 to $3.02 
per ton, or $28.73 to $35.64 per acre. (See Table XXIV.) 
