Sugar Beets and Sugar Cane 
R39 
shape. It has been carefully developed for nearly a century by se- 
lecting year after year the seeds of the sweetest beets. Eighty years 
ago it took eighteen pounds of beets to yield one pound of sugar, 
while now only six to eight pounds are needed. 
Where the sugar plants grow in the United States. The United 
States extends so far from north to south that all four sugar plants 
are grown within its limits — maple, beet, sorghum, and cane. Fig- 
ure 52 shows where the three most important grow. Notice that 
the sugar beet is grown in the cool northern states, the cool plateau 
states of the West, and the cool Pacific coast states, while sugar cane 
is confined to the warmer southern states. Sorghum does well in the 
cooler parts of the South. Sugar maple trees grow in our northern- 
most states from Indiana eastward, and in southern Canada. 
Sugar beets. Sugar beets could be grown much more extensively 
in the United States than they now are, but they are crowded out by 
more profitable crops, such as cereals. They are not well adapted 
to American methods of agriculture, because they require much 
hand labor. No machines have as yet been invented for weeding 
the young plants and thinning them out. 
Because the better soil is used for more profitable crops, beets are 
often given on™ ‘= can il where little else will grow. This 
£7 
tL 
x 
UN-TED ST*" 
SUGAR CR: 
ACREAGE. 191% 
EACH DOT REPRESENTS 1000 =. 
Fic. 52. Only 5 per cent of the sugar used commercially in the United States is produced in the 
cane region of the southern states (chiefly Louisiana), while 18 per cent comes from sugar beets. 
The rest is imported. This country takes almost the entire Cuban and Porto Rican crop.