SUGAR OR YIELD ?
One aspect of the crop demands more attention than it has received. The plant was grown in England sixty years ago at least ; and there are records of the results. They are startling at first sight. The yields were, on occasion, twice as great as they are to-day, twenty tons to the acre as compared with ten, to take a rough figure. The reason probably is that the owners of factories continuously demand beet of high and yet higher sugar content ; and the farmer is in their hands. Bulk of yield, which is what the farmer wants, does not particularly concern the factory, whose ideal is the highest percentage of sugar to each root. Since the lead has come from the factory end of the business, the richness of sugar in the root has risen steadily. It may amount in extreme cases to 20 per cent., an enormous proportion. We quite properly congratulate ourselves on this achievement, due both to selection and hybridization ; but we must simultaneously confess that the yield has fallen more or less pro rata. A scientific farmer assures me that a generation and more ago on an experimental plot the actual sugar-yield per acre was greater than it is to-day : the yield more than compensated for the low sugar content. He considers that the quality of richness per root has been overdone.
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