24
COSTS OF PRODUCING SUGAR BEETS
the value of good plowlands in Michigan was reported to be 7.8 per
eent greater in 1921 than in 1922 and 3.9 per cent less in 1923 than
in 1922. Consequently to obtain the land charges for 1921 and 1923
the 1922 land charges as obtained in the field investigation were in-
creased 7.8 per cent for 1921 and reduced 3.9 per cent for 1923.
Yields for the three years.—The yields per acre for 1921, 1922, and
1923, were obtained from the farmers themselves and were checked
against the factory records except in Michigan and Ohio, where the
1923 crop had not been harvested when the investigators were in the
field. For these two States the 1923 yields were determined from
data furnished by the United States Department of Agriculture.
The 1922 yields for the farms investigated were increased or decreased
for 1923 in proportion as the yields for that year deviated from the
1922 yields. If the average yield for all farms in a given locality was
10 per cent lower in 1923 than in 1922, the average 1923 yields for
the farms investigated were determined by reducing the 1922 yields
for these farms by 10 per cent.
Method of weighting.—The annual averages for each State for 1921
and 1923 were arrived at by weighting on the basis of the 1922 produc-
tion, the three-year average by weighting the commission’s data for
each year by the total production of the State as reported by the
Yearbooks of the United States Department of Agriculture. The
averages for the United States were obtained by weighting the State
costs by the total production of the State in each of the three years,
respectively, as shown in the Yearbooks of the Department of Agri-
culture, and are combinations of data for the nine States only.
Additional data.—In addition to the data on the costs of production
and returns to the growers, the commission obtained, for the area
investigated, much supplemental information on the economic status
of the sugar-beet industry—its present limitations, the possible in-
crease in beet acreage under existing conditions of farm management,
the effect of the sugar-beet crop upon yields of other crops planted
subsequently on the same ground, the effect of the beet-sugar factories
upon land values, and other valuable data.
SCOPE AND REPRESENTATIVENESS OF THE INVESTIGATION
The commission desired to obtain data which would show the
costs of producing sugar beets in the various regions and for the
country as a whole. As it was, of course impracticable to obtain
costs from all growers, representative areas in the chief producing
regions were selected. The records obtained for the 22 selected areas
cover 2,242 farms in the nine States—Michigan, Ohio, Nebraska,
Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and California.
These nine States produced 94 per cent of the total beet tonnage
and included 92 per cent of the acreage of sugar beets harvested in
the United States in 1922. The area investigated produced 12.1 per
cent of the total tonnage and was 10.4 per cent of the total acreage
planted in sugar beets in the United States that year. The percent-
age of the production investigated in the individual States ranged
from 6.5 in Idaho to 27.3 in Wyoming. For the individual areas so
visited the commission’s figures cover from one-fifth to one-half of
the beets produced. The beets for which cost data were obtained
were manufactured into sugar in 58 of the 81 beet-sugar factories
operating in the United States in 1922.
