Bruce Fink 
Fig. 51. Seen from a short distance, a field of sugar cane looks like a field of corn. The tall 
canes are cuit bv hand with a large. straight knife. 
CHAPTER FIVE 
SUGAR BEETS AND SUGAR CANE 
A FEW centuries ago most people satisfied their need for sugar by 
occasionally eating honey, by drinking the sap of such trees as the 
maple and the palm, or by chewing a stick of sugar cane. Now 
civilized people use pure sugar three times a day in various foods 
and drinks, and they use it in considerable quantities. Hence it 
pays thousands of farmers to raise plants for the sugar they contain. 
The sugar-yielding plants. Sugar beets and sugar maples are 
raised in cold regions, sugar cane in warm regions, and sorghum cane 
in intermediate regions. By far the most important of these are 
sugar cane and sugar beets. In ordinary use no one can tell the dif- 
ference between the sugar made from beets and that made from cane. 
A sugar “cane,” or stalk, looks like a cornstalk without the ears. 
It grows differently, however; for many canes spring from one root, 
and when these are cut new shoots begin to sprout from the old root. 
A sorghum cane also looks somewhat like a cornstalk; it grows like 
the sugar cane. 
The sugar beet looks like a rutabaga turnip in color, size, and 
AHR