Agricultural research in the beet sugar industry

"AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH IN THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY"

Delivered Before The Teknik Club, Denver, Colorado, March

19, 1946

By P. B. Smith, of The Beet Sugar Development Foundntion

The importance of research in its relation to industrial development has been greatly accentuated by the war. Tremenduous progress has been made in a short time in medicine and all types of mechanical and electrical engineering. For a long time agricultural research has lagged behind industrial research but a new era is developing to aid the farmer. Just recently the California Legis-lature set aside funds totalling $2,400,000.00 for agricultural research by the University of California, Many universities and schools have set up research funds. For example, Wayne University in Michigan has a fund of $200,000.00 for the development of agricultural machinery. The Detroit Bureau of Commerce has a large fund set aside f,r research of agricultural machinery with a group of forty engineers of automotive companies in charge of it. This committee is headed by C. F. Kettering and has as its purpose the development of labor saving devices for improvement of agriculture. One idea of the importance being placed upon recent activity in its relation to development of products is that empha-sized by the Dow Chemical Company, of Midland, Michigan. Over one-third of all of its organization staff is devoted to research problems. In

1945,

this one company spent $26,000,000.00 on research activities. In line with this need for advancing the development of beet sugar research, the various beet sugar

proces-sors in the United States organized a separate corporation in July,

1945,

for developing agricultural research in the sugar beet industry.

Principally The Beet Sugar Developn.ent Foundation, which is the name of the research corporation representing the beet sugar industry, is centering its activities on development of machinery to eliminate the "stoop" labor from sugar beet production. Formerly, under old methods

47%

of the cost of produc-ing beets came from the need for hand labor. Great strides have already been made in reducing this labor requirement. At the present stage, we are far from being completely mechanized but probably are about in the same position as a Model "T" car is compared with the efficiency of a 1946 ffi(')del automobile. In the last forty-five years, the beet sugar industry has seen progress from the horse drawn walking plows and such labor consuming equipment to modern tractor farming. In

1945

about one-tenth of all of the beets grown in the United States were harvested completely by machinery. This has developed during a period of labor shortage and also shortage of materials with which to build the machines. Some Factory areas in Southern California last year completely harvested as much as

87%

of their entire beet acreage by use of power harvesters. These machines not only eliminate a lot of the labor but also reduce cost of the harvest opera-tions. There are a great many mechanical harvesters both in the experimental and production stage. We have examined in the last few months some 28 different kinds of mechanical beet harvesters. The beauty of this interest is that all of the machines endeavor to solve the problem of efficient harvesting from differ-ent angles. There are good points and bad points in all of the machines but su~stantially there are a number which can be accepted by beet growers. These, cf co11-rse, will see rapid improvement through use by farmers.

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At present, harvesters vary greatly in size from machines that have a

capacity of JOO tons of beets per day down to those that might harvest only 30

to 40 tons. This is necessary because of the variance in size of farming

opera-tions and availability of adequate power equipment for pulling the ma.chines. At

first, one of the most troublesome problems in building mechanical beet

harves-ters was in doing a proper job of topping or separating the roots from the green

growth at the proper point. This has been fairly well solved with machines that

do a much more accurate job than was possible by humans operating a hand knife.

At the present time, a very serious problem is that of separating clods

satisfac-torily from the beets. Several of the machines offer almost complete clod

elim-ination and we are busy endeavoring to improve other machines to make a

satis-factory clod eliminator.

Because of the short period in which beets can be harvested more or less

stress has been placed on development of harvesting equipment. With the

develop-ment of some very acceptable harvesters, our attention is now being drawn to

working with a much more difficult problem and that is the elimination of hand

labor in the spring required for thinning and weeding the crop, This essentially

consists not only in improvement of beet planters but also in improving beet seed,

beet seed beds, improving beet emergence, elimination of weeds and in using the

proper method for eliminating excess plants in the row.

Inherently the beet seed is composed of from one to several germs that may

develop into a group of plants. In growing a s~tisfactory yield of beets it has

been necessary to "finger" thin the bunches of plants the.t develop together in

a spot in the row. Part of this difficulty was caused by using inefficient

planters as well as poor agronomic practices. Several years ago, there was

de-veloped a process of cracking or segmenting the seed and developing essentially

single germ segments. This consists chiefly of rubbing the seed between an

emery wheel and a steel anvil, breaking down the seed to different germ units.

The seed then is carefully screened and graded in order that it can be planted

in a planter with a fair degree of accuracy. The University of California and

others in the industry, are endeavoring to break down the seeds with other types

of machinery in order to eliminate criticism of the present process which

in-jures some of the germs. Some very good progress is being made in this

direc-tion but the industry is still seeking the development genetically of beets that

will produce seed which has a uniform number of germs in each seed ball. For

decades, research investigators have sought single germ beet seed plants.

Rus-sian scientists appear to have achieved some success in the development of beet

plants which bear only single germ seed units. Some scientists in the United

States are showing good progress along the same lines, not only developing

single germ bearing plants but also uniformly duuble germ seeds. If this can

be accomplished, mechanization of spring work will largely depend upon the

plant-ing mechanism~ the development of fungicides and methods to get plants emerged

above ground in spite of unfavorable soil conditions. Inherently the beet

seed-ling is susceptible to many fungus and other organic diseases which cause

dampen-ing off either below the soil or after it has emerged. The young seedling also

does not have much strength in its ability to push through crusted ground. There

seems to be some progress of promise $long the line of developing a larger germ

in the beet seed. This might be quite important if it has more vigorous

charac-teristics.

-2-For a great many years, farmers have planted seeds with two types of fur-row openers. We have been considerably impressed with the possibility of improv-ing the design of furrow openers which will offer the young beet seedling a bet-ter start in life. This spring; at sev~ral places, we will endeavor to try out some new ideas along this line. In one of these we will press a seed furrow in-to the ground about

3/4

of an inch deed and 1/2 of an inch wide instead of more

or less moving the soil out like a little trench, as is customary at the present time. It is thought that this would have the advantage of pressing the

3/4

of

an inch of soil into a tighter, firmer mass irnmed.iately below where the seed is placed. We will then use a shot of water on the seed which carries with it

fungicide and fertilizer held in suspension. The seed will be soaked for a short period previous to planting and it is hoped that after the seed furrow is pressed tightly together that the seedling will emerge three to four days sooner than with customary practice~ The advantage of using water is thqt we make a favor-able condition for germination and also will furnish a band fungicide protection

as well as band fertilizer attached to the ground. This may have a great deal to do with making positive emergence of the seed. Compaction of the earth around the seed will to some extent eliminate evaporation of moisture. Another thing we will try is firming with a three inch width wheel an area immediately in front of the furrowing device. This may offer some possibility in movement of

soil moisture from below the seed to assist in germination. Two rotary hoes,

one tractor driven and one ground driven, will be used ahead of the seed furrow-ing device to kill weed seeds and to assist in seed bed preparation. This idea

offers considerable promise in Michigan and Ohio principally and by adding sepa-rately gypsum (calcium sulfate or land plaster) just ahead of the mulch secured by the rather narrow rotary tiller and also by the use of ground sheep manure and peat moss. We will have an opportunity to study the effect of these sub-stances placed in the top inch of soil to eliminate crust conditions which would prevent emergence. For years, farmers have accepted rather nonchalantly rather crude press wh~els for pressing the seed furrow together. We have designed a number of the new type press wheels which we hope may better firm the soil around the seed. In some areas, we are planting the beets and then spraying the ground

to kill weeds that are present. In this way, without disturbing the soil, it is hoped that the weed problem may partially be solved without the need for hand workers. This affects very seriously the delta region of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers in California.

Weed are and have been one of the worst problems that a farmer has to fight, not only in row crops but in forage and grain crops. There is a great in-terest in Northern California in the use of chemical spraying used from airplanes in handling weed growth in a selective manner in grain and other crops. I have seen some very excellent examples of this practice just recently. We presented to several chemical companies the problem of developing a selective weed killer for the sugar beet crop. At least one large company indicates that they think they have some chemicals that may assist in killing some of the commoner weeds without affecting the beet plant. If this can be successfully done the possibil-ity of totally eliminating the need for hand labor cannot be overemphasized. It will be possible then to plant the seed where we want the beets to come up, if we are able to develop the means of getting plants in thrifty condition above the

ground. When this stage is reached, it will be possible to plant beet seed like corn at the rate of 1/2 to

3/4

pounds per acre and totally eliminate the need for any labor in beet fields. That would, indeed, be a happy day and one which we

In the meantime, before total elimination of hand labor is achieved

through some of these ideas, we are endeavoring to improve beet drills

permit-ting accurate planpermit-ting of the seed and by using rather light rates of seeding

and following with beet thinning and beet blocking machines eliminating excess

plants. At the present time, there are three methods of doing this: (1) using

beet laborers with long handled hoes to trim to the desired number of plants per

100 foot of row, the excess beets in the row. With 2 to

6

pounds of seed per

acre this has been found to eliminate about 1/4 to 1/2 of the hand labor

requir-ed per acre. (2) Cross blocking and cross thinning beets to remove the excess

plants followed by cross cultivation previous to any hoeing by labor of the weeds.

This can be done with a number of cultivating tools which farmers customarily

use in farming. If the stand of beets required to be left might be considered

100 per 100 foot of row or a beet every 12 inches, appropriate tools can be used

to eliminate the excess plants. Slightly more than the 100 can be reduced by

using whnt is known as knife-edge bulltongues placed on the cultivator bars of

the tractor or using some tools which we are developing at the present time. A

practice which is used universally in Minnesota consists of knives and discs,

duckfeet and discs or universal type knives only. These tools do a very

satis-factory job and can then have the possibility of cultivating the field again in

both directions to eliminate subsequent weed growth. i:1_{1here this has been done}

it has used only about 38% as much hand labor as it required for customary

blocking and thinning.

(3)

There are many down-the-row blocking machines which

can be used to eliminate excess plants, through use of rotary knives or rotary

hoes. These have an advantage in that they cnn work in slightly wetter soils

and are able, because of the oblique angle with which they strike the row, of

leaving very small blocks. Last year, Mr. Ernest Mervine, at Colorado A. & M.

College, was able to leave a small 3/811 _{block each six inches thereby}

elimina-ting most of the weed and excess beet plants. It has been found that up to 40%

of the total beet population can be doubles without detrimental effect upon the

yield of the crop (Deming, U.S. D. A., E.xperiments,

1945).

The blocking can be done in two ways - that is to leave as nearly as

pos-sible 100 blocks per 100 feet of row that will contain beets and then

subsequent-ly using labor with hoes to hoe or trim the blocks to one or two plants, This

procedure is necessary with old type drilling equipment. The second type of work is mechanical thinning, in which, by the use of drilling equipment that

dis-tributes the seed fairly uniformly we are able to arrive at the final 100 plants

per 100 feet without much need of trimming by labor hoeing the field. This

of-fers greater promise for elimination of labor and Mr. Mervine, in

1945,

found

that he needed only 30% as much labor on this type of work as required on

regu-lar blocking and thinning. The time required by workers to weed the beets so

mechanically thinned was only 80% as much as that required after complete hand

blocking and thinning. This indicates very well what can be done as an

inter-mediate step in eliminating the need of "stoop" labor.

There are several inventors, one of whom I talked with within the last

few days, that are developing an eledric 11_{eye" beet blocker. It is possible}

through the use of photoelectric cells powered by storage batteries on the

trac-tor, to more or less select beets in the row in order to get around the fact that

beets customarily when planted at light rates of seeding come up in an irregular

manner. For example, it is possible to set the machine to leave a block 111 _wide

each 12 inches, The machine will cut the row longer than the 1211 _{if there is}

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not a plant at that point. We intend trying out some of this type of equipment this spring and if successful and not too complicated, it should prove quite popular in eliminating any need for thinning workers.

I have outlined briefly some of the things we have in mind for the spring work without stressing too much the importance of some of our harvesting pro-blems. One thought on harvesters is that the beet crop is essentially two crops

and th~t the tops as well as the roots should be properly cared for. The value

of the top growth cannot be too much emphasized as shown by a great many experi-ments at different institutions and by numerous practical feeders. Essentially the tops are a high protein feed and if dehydrated contain between 14% and

22%'

protein. On analysis they are very high in vitamin content, particularly caro-tene, riboflavin and xanthopyll. They also contain very low fiber content which is invaluable for feeding purposes. We are endeavoring to study more thoroughly some ot the possibilities of properly conserving the feeding value of the forage part of the crop. Customarily the beet top, including crowns, include about

2/3

of all the feed value represented by the by-products of the beet. There are many other uses of the constituents of these by-products. You may be interested in knowing th2.t Dr. Soule and Dr. Eickelson, working in the Hygienic Laboratory

of the University of Michigan, found that dehydrated beet crowns were excellent

material for propagating penicillin, streptomycin and other miobotics invaluable to medical science. They found that they can predict more accurately the final quantity developed through the use of the beet crovms as a mediwn. There are

many other things that are too numerous to mention at this time that should be investigated in order to make more efficient use of the sugar beet plant which has proven to be the most capable of any field crop when rated on the basis of

energy values grown per acre. We believe thnt thorough research not only of

mechanical practices but of fertilizers, irrigation methods and development of

proper use of the vital crop constituents will be of utmost importance to Ameri-can agriculture in years to come,

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