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.