• HOME GROWN SUGAR
/THE new rural industry of sugar-beet growing and of • sugar-making will become thoroughly established in England this year. It has been talked about for a hundred years, and various enthusiasts have made well over 5,000 different experiments, all of them, at least in one respect, successful. They have proved that the English soil and climate are congenial to that peculiarly interesting plant out of which at least four-fifths of the sugar consumed in Europe is concocted.
Three factories are already in being ; and full arrange- ments have been made for the immediate construction of many others. Two big companies—the Anglo-Dutch and Anglo-Scottish—promise six more. Before the year is out four, at any rate, should be finished—at Ely, Ipswich, Kidderminster and Spalding. No good reason exists why we should not eventually have fifty or more factories within the United Kingdom and more in Ireland. But whatever the rate of growth in the future, we may consider the industry as firmly established. We are doing to-day exactly what Napoleon did in France a hundred and twenty years ago. He was driven to the reform by the British blockade and his own endeavours to ruin the West Indies ; but both he and others builded better than they knew. Hundreds of factories—the first in Silesia in 1799—were raised throughout Europe. Its tired soil was thereby restored to a new fertility ; and a lucrative and intensive industry introduced.
The beneficent chemical process that above others makes the world possible is perhaps better illustrated in the sugar beet than in any plant that grows. The green in plant leaves is the one known elixir of life. It is the only chemical product that has the power to bridge the mineral and animal kingdoms—to turn a stone into a plant. What is most distinctive about the crop of beet approaching maturity is the enormous mass of vivid green leaves that sprout from the head of the buried root. These are the real sugar factory, busy every moment of sunshine in converting carbonic acid gas into sugary juices, and singularly efficient at the task. The root goes deep, and when their work is done the leaves may be restored to the soil. How quickly they plough them in on the French farms ! All this means that the crop, though it needs artificial stimulus, aerates and renovates the soil, even while it is building up wealth in the biennial storehouse of its root. In France the writer has heard more than one farmer say that he is willing even to lose a little money over his sugar. The succeeding crop will pay for it, and will need no further manure.
The arrival of the industry, a hundred years late, in England, has been assured at last by a political act. Almost for the first time in our agricultural politics a con- tinuous policy has been laid down by common consent. A subsidy, so-called—it is in part relief from excise duty —has been granted for a period of ten years. Up till the end of 1928 this will be at the rate of 19s. 6d. a cwt. ; up till the end of 1931 at 18s. a cwt. ; up till the end of 1934 at 6s. 6d. a cwt. The rates vary a little according to the quality of the sugar. This grant, which goes to the factory, entails certain obligations towards the farmer, who is not to receive less than 44s. a ton for beet that contains 15i per cent. of sugar ; and this is a fair average quality. Since he should grow at least eight tons to the acre, and may easily grow more, the returns should not be less than £17 an acre ; and some of the by-products that come back to him are very valuable. The factory itself gives the maximum of work during the winter months when work on the land is slackest ; and a great deal of it, as the managers of the Cantley factory in Norfolk -have proved, can be well done by a labourer after a few weeks' training. The establishment of a factory has many incidental advantages. Among them is a stimulus to our neglected canals and waterways. The crop is intensive. To speak roughly, each acre of ground should produce a ton of refined sugar.
The English farmer is not yet wholly persuaded of the worth of the new industry. The first factory built in England (in 1870) failed solely because the farmers would not pledge themselves to grow enough roots. After expe- rience with mangolds they hated the cantankerous new root that buries itself to the hilt, and must be laboriously dug up by the fork or by some highly specialized machinery. How different from the kindly turnip or mangold, or yet more from the kohl-rabi that are more or less aerial and can be pulled easily by the hand. Farmers disliked, and still dislike, the too scientific inquisition into the crop. It irritates them to see every ounce of mud washed from the roots before they are weighed. They hear and half believe tales of the enormous profits made by the factory owners as compared with the producer. But prejudice is fading away. The quick and certain payment, the immediate gain from any increase in the weight and richness of crop, the obviously good effect on the soil, the provision of a good cheap fodder from the by-products—all this is rapidly converting the farmer. Little difficulty has been experienced in any district in making forward contracts for an acreage large enough to supply the need of the individual factories.
A difficulty, which has beer i very vocal, is the opposi- tion of the sugar refiners. They regard the subsidy as penal in regard to their industry, which had already begun to fall on evil times. The subsidy, approved by a Labour as well as a Unionist Government, is, of course, big—bigger than has been generally realized. Since an acre can produce a ton of refined sugar, and the subsidy is now 19s. 6d. a cwt., it follows, on paper, that the nation is paying the equivalent of £19 10s. per acre. The sum, not unnaturally, appears fantastic to the mind of a people who rejected E2 an acre subsidy for wheat ; and horrible to manufacturers who suffer rather than gain from the expenditure. It is, however, smaller than it was, and will decrease. The refiners urge that the factories should make crude Sugar and give over the work of refining it to existing factories set up for this purpose. The objections are that sugar-making has become within recent years a continuous process, and that the most economical method is to complete it at the one place at one bout. Costs in both labour and transport are thus saved. The answer seems to be conclusive, unless sugar-growing is to be abandoned altogether ; and that policy of despair is now finally rejected.
It has always been maintained by the stalwart pioneers, of whom Lord Denbigh is the chief, that in the sugar industry lies the best hope of reclaiming our lost acres, and increasing the plough-land of Britain. One industry does not necessarily drive out another ; and in history the effect of sugar-growing—especially in France, Ger- many and Holland—has been to increase the general fertility of the soil and general activity on the land. No other crop has more profoundly altered the nature of a Continent's productiveness. Our farmers and our econo- mists have advanced a long way beyond the Home Sec- retary—quoted in a French technical paper published in 1887—who said that if the industry were started in England he would "At once take steps to tear up the English crop to the last root ! "
The new industry is much the most hopeful line of development in the rural life of England to-day ; and it is confidently hoped that within ten years it will need little or no extrinsic help. W. B. T.
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