Modern Business Geography 
United States Reclamation Service 
Fig. 53. Sugar beets growing on the irrigated land of the Salt River vroiect. in Arizona. 
fact helps to explain why eastern Michigan is prominent in the beet 
industry. But the best place for beets is in the irrigated lands of 
the dry West, where the cool but sunny weather of the long autumn 
causes the beets to grow large and sugary. That is one reason why 
Colorado, California, Utah, and Idaho are important producers of 
beet sugar. In those states, throughout the winter months, large 
factories receive a constant stream of wagons and trains, bearing the 
beet crop. 
At the factories the beets are washed, sliced, and soaked in hot 
water to take out the juice. The juice is partly purified with lime 
and acid, and then is filtered. Next itis heated until the water evapo- 
rates, leaving the sugar as damp, brownish crystals. These crystals 
are purified, whitened, and broken into the granulated table sugar 
that we know so well. 
Sugar beets outside the United States. The cool climate with mod- 
erate summer rainfall and fairly sunny autumns in which sugar beets 
thrive is found in much of northern Europe from northern France 
to central Russia (Fig. 54). Beets are an especially important crop 
in central Germany and Bohemia. This is partly because farm labor 
is cheap in that region, and partly because, with population so dense 
that there is not room for pasturage, the people find it profitable to 
feed their cattle on the pulp that is left after the sugar has been ex- 
tracted from the beets. Moreover, there is a large market for sugar