Sugar Beets and Sugar Cane 
71 
close at hand, and the great sugar-cane regions are far away. The 
summer traveler in northern Europe long remembers the great ex- 
panses of beet fields, and the peasant women and children on their 
knees pulling the weeds that would smother the young plants. 
The climate for sugar cane. The coolest places where the sugar 
cane grows are our southern states, from eastern Texas to South 
Carolina, as appears in Figure 52. There the frost kills the cane 
each winter, but the difficulty is overcome by planting new canes 
every year early in the spring, after the last frost of the winter, and 
harvesting them late in the fall, before the first frost of the next win- 
ter. To follow this method successfully requires at least eight 
months without frost. Nearér to the equator, in such places as the 
great sugar-cane islands of the West Indies, Java, Hawaii, and Mau- 
ritius, the cane is allowed to grow from three to ten years before new 
plantings are made, and a heavy crop is cut from the plantation 
every year. 
In the islands just mentioned and in sugar-cane regions of less 
importance, such as India, Egypt, Brazil, northern Argentina, and 
the Philippines, a high, uniform temperature prevails and the rainfall 
is abundant. Under these conditions not only is the cane full of sap, 
but the sap carries a high percentage of sugar. Sometimes as many 
as eight tons of sugar are made from the cane cut annually on one acre 
of land. 
Sugar cane on the Cuban plantations. In Cuba, where sugar cane 
is king, the plantations are of great extent, — sometimes several thou- 
4 
~~ 
Beer Sugar 
LANE SUGAR 
Brey Suear 
CANE SUGAR 
WORLD 
SUGAR 
PRODUCTION 
2.4 DOT REPRESENTS 25.000 LO- 
WORLD PRU. 
24 0D0ONOD t AN? 
Fic. 54. Sugar cane grows only in regions that some time in the year have an average tempera- 
ture of 80 degrees; that is, sugar cane is almost a purely tropical crop. (Compare with Figures 17 
and 18, pages 30, 31.) India, Cuba, and Java produce the bulk of the world’s supply. There are 
vast undeveloped regions in Africa and in Brazil that may sometime be used for sugar cane. 
Northwestern Europe is the greatest producer of beet sugar. About half the world’s supply of 
sugar comes from beets and half from sugar cane