/
Capturing
Solar
Energy
P
RTMITIVE MEN worshipped the sun. To th.em, the blazing ball of fire moving across the sky each day was the great giver of life.This belief was not far wrong; from the sun ceaselessly pours the great stream of energy upon which earthly life depends.
Primitive man's knowledge was meager. He did not know that the green leaves of growing plants make the,,sun's energy available to human beings and animals. He knew nothing of the miraculous process of photosynthesis which takes place in every green leaf. He did not know that in this process the plant draws water from the earth and ,carbon diqxide from the air, and that in the leaves of the plant the sun's energy combines hydrogen from the water with the carbon dioxide to make sugar. Nor did he know that this sugar-forming process is the basis of all life on earth.
Modern scientific man has probed deeply into the mysteries of life. He knows much about what goes on inside a green leaf, al-though he cannot duplicate the process. He knows that sugar is the first food all plants make. While a very few plants store it in abundance, all plants use it for their own growth.
Modern man has demonstrated that our great basic sources of heat and power come from sugar. He knows, for example, that the energy we derive from coal and oil is the energy of the sun that once was in sugar. Now man is seeking to capture the energy of the sun directly through solar batteries, engines, and furnaces.
This manual tells the story of the sugarbeet, nature's most effi-cient plant for converting solar energy to the uses of men and ani-mals. It tells about how this plant is grown; about the industry which has been built upon it; and about the sugar produced by the sugarbeet-energy of the sun in a form not only useful to man-kind but useful in a particularly pleasing way.
United States Beet Sugar Association Washington, D.C.
The Sugarbeet
I
N THE White House one January morning in1812, Dolley Madison, the President's wife, opened an unusual package from Paris. With it was a personal letter from a good friend, Joel Barlow, at that time United States minister to France.
"I send you the oddest present that you will receive from France," the letter began. "It is a beet root, of that sort that they make so much noise about as cultivated for sugar. ...
"Put it in your garden for seed, not that I think it worth our while to make sugar of them . . . "
And so the first sugarbeet to arrive in Amer-ica created no great stir. Minister Barlow could not foresee that today the sugarbeet would be providing some 30 million tons of pure sugar each year-more than 40 percent of the world's total supply of sugar. Nor could he anticipate that in the United States today nearly one-third of all the sugar consumed would be beet sugar -more than 3 million tons a y'ear.
Most of the world's sugarbeets now are grown in the North Temperate Zone. Exactly where the plant originated is not known, but historians agree that long ago it grew wild in Southern Europe and Northern Africa. The plant then was an annual, completing its growth cycle in one season. In finding its way to a more temperate climate, and by selection and im-provement, the sugarbeet became a biennial. Thus it stores sugar in the root during the first year, and produces seed in the second. Beets are harvested for sugar at the end of the first year of growth, when the sugar content and weight are at their peak.
Scientists are still improving the sugarbeet. Like other crops, it has natural enemies such as insects, plant diseases, hail, and drought. But better beets-higher-yielding, disease-resistant, and adapted to local areas-are constantly be-ing developed.
Characteristics in sugarbeets, as in other plants, are transmitted from one generation to
the next in seeds. Since the early 1930's, the development of an American sugarbeet seed-production industry has been an important factor in the improvement of American sugar-beets. Previously ( except for a brief period during World War 1) virtually all sugarbeet seed used in the United States was imported from Europe. Now the seed used here is pro-duced domestically and is adapted to American soils and climates.
There are many thousands of sugarbeet growers in the United States. Each year they produce nearly 30 million tons of beets on about 1.5 million acres of land in 27 states-from the Northeast and Great Lakes regions
through the Rocky Mountain states on to the Pacific Coast. Leading beet-producing states in-clude California, Idaho, Colorado, Washington, Minnesota, Michigan, Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Ohio, Texas, Utah, Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona. Some 60 fac-tories, located in 19 states, process the huge annual tonnage of sugarbcets. Because beets are perishable, processing plants arc located near the farms. This provides the added advan-tage of a combined agricultural and manufac-turing economy.
The sugarbeet is known botanically as Beta
vulgaris. The plant's two major parts are: ( l ) an enlarged root one to two feet long, from which sugar is extracted, and (2) leafy foliage valuable for livestock feeding.
Unlike the red garden beet, the sugarbeet is silvery white or creamy in color. The upper part measures four to six inches aero s. The beet gradually tapers into a smaller, threadlike root which grows three to six feet down into the soil
and has an extensive system of lateral roots and rootlets.
The broad, spreading leaves are a rich green color. The stems, four to eight inches long, grow up and out at the top or crown of the beet.
While sugarbeets vary in size, the average beet weighs about two pounds. About fifteen percent or more of this is stored sucrose, equiv-alent to approximately 14 teaspoons of pure, white, granulated sugar.
Chemically, sugar is one of the simplest foods known to man. While the plant gets its cell structure from soil nutrients, it must manu-facture sugar to feed itself if it is to survive and grow. This sugar-making process, which is known as photosynthesis, is the basis of all plant life-and, since ultimately all animal life depends upon plants, it is the basis of all animal life as well.
The process of photosynthesis consists of bringing together and combining, in a definite relationship, atoms of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (0) in the presence of sun-light. From the air the plant obtains carbon and oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide (CO:!), which enters the leaves through the
pores or stomata. Hydrogen and oxygen in the form of water (H:!O) enter the plant through the root hairs, and travel through the root up into the leaves.
The manufacturing of sugar takes place in the leaf cells in bodies called chloroplasts. They contain chlorophyll which gives the leaves their distinctive green color and assists in the sugar-making process. In the chloroplasts the sun's energy combines hydrogen from the water with the carbon dioxide to form sugar, which is stored throughout the plant. In the sugarbeet it is stored chiefly in the root. Excess oxygen is given off into the air. Jn effect, sunlight
fur-nishes the power or energy, carbon dioxide and water are the raw materials, the chloro-plasts are the factory, the root is the warehouse,
sugar is the product, and free oxygen is the by-product.
A molecule of sugar, or sucrose, its technical name, consists of 12 atoms of carbon, 22 atoms of hydrogen, and 11 atoms of oxygen, and is designated by the formula C1 :!H:!:!01 1 . Su-crose extracted from sugarbeets and suSu-crose extracted from sugarcane are identical in chem-ical formula, nutritional value, physchem-ical proper-ties, and sweetening powers.
The Sugarbeet
and the Farmer
F
ARMERS like to grow sugarbeets for severalreasons: first, they are a dependable cash crop; second, they promote soil fertility and sound farming practices; third, by-products provide an important feed for livestock.
The sugarbeet is a sturdy plant that can be grown in a variety of soils and climates. It grows in the heavy soils, in loam, and in alka-line and sandy soils. It thrives under such con-trasting conditions as those existing in the Im-perial Valley on the California-Mexico border, actually below sea level, and in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, 7,000 feet above sea level.
The sugarbeet often makes a remarkable re-covery from adverse weather conditions that may destroy other crops.
The sturdiness and adaptability of the plant explain only partly why the farmer considers the sugarbeet a dependable source of cash in-come. Equally important is his contractual ar-rangement with the sugar company that buys his beets. All sugarbeets in the United States are grown under contract. In working out the terms with the company, the farmer is repre-sented by his sugarbeet growers association. The contract is negotiated before the crop is
A full-grown sugarbeet
planted. Consequently, when the farmer plants, he is assured of a definite market.
Company payment to the farmer per ton of beets is determined by the sugar content of the beets and the final net return to the com-pany for the sugar sold. In no other phase of American agriculture, on a broad, industry-wide basis, is there such a close relationship between farmer and processor.
A second value of the sugarbeet to the farm-er-its beneficial influence on soil fertility and good farming-derives from the physical struc-ture of the beet and the methods required for its successful production. It is ideal for crop
ro-• 0
tatwn programs.
Successful agriculture is usually carried on by planting in sequence crops requiring different cultural practices. Such a rotation includes row crops that require intensive cultivation (pota-toes, beans, and sugarbeets), noncultivated crops ( such as wheat or barley), and legumes (like alfalfa or sweet clover).
Rotating crops among his fields helps the
farmer maintain or increase the productivity of his soil. When plants with shallow roots are al-ternated with deeper-feeding crops, one level
of soil is resting while another layer is being
drawn upon. Different crops have different ap-petites for soil nutrients. Decaying residues of previous crops benefit different crops that fol-low. Soil pests that thrive on one crop may
starve on another.
As a cultivated row crop, the sugarbeet is
ideally suited to a rotation program. With its
deep root system, the beet is especially good for alternating with shallow-rooted crops. When the enlarged upper portion of the root is pulled at harvest, the lower part, or taproot, and the
thousands of tiny rootlets remain in the ground -decaying and adding fertility and humus to
the soil.
Because of its wide adaptability to various soils and climates, the sugarbeet permits farm-ers to carry on a sound rotation program in
certain areas where some other cultivated crops do not thrive so well. Records of the
Reclama-tion Bureau, for example, show that the
sugar-beet is the most dependable crop that can be
grown extensively on western irrigated lands. A third advantage of the sugarbeet to the
farmer is found in its by-products, which
pro-vide excellent livestock feed and thus offer a second source of farm income. The by-products
alone of an acre of sugarbeets often equal the feed value of corn or barley grown from an acre of similar productivity.
The beet tops---crowns and foliage-may be fed to livestock in the field after harvest, or they may be hauled to feed bunks or silos, or dried
and baled. For each ton of beets the farmer
may obtain one-half to three-fourths of a ton
of beet tops. University tests have shown that beet top silage is equal in feed value to high quality corn silage.
Beet pulp, consisting of the slices of beets
after the sugar has been removed, is also fed to sheep, dairy herds, and beef cattle.-Pulp con-tains carbohydrates and also significant quan-tities of protein and minerals. Most commonly
the pulp is dried, and sold in bulk or in bags
either in crumble or pellet form. A ton of sugar-beets will produce about 125 pounds of dried beet pulp.
Sugarbeet molasses, another by-product, is often mixed with the pulp before or during the
dehydration process.
Molasses-dried beet pulp approximates the feeding value of corn, and also has benefits corn does not possess. Molasses may also be added to practically any livestock feed, and is used in the products of many mixed feed manufactur-ers. About 90 pounds of molasses result from
processing a ton of sugarbeets.
An acre of land yielding 20 tons of beets will produce about 6,000 pounds of pure
granu-lated sugar, and the by-products of the same acre, when included in a ration fed to livestock,
will produce from 400 to 600 pounds of meat
or 5,000 to 6,000 pounds of milk.
Thus the sugarbeet earns the title of nature's most efficient crop in its utilization of solar en-ergy, water, and soil nutrients. No other crop
in the Temperate Zone produces so much food
per acre for man and livestock.
Growing Sugarbeets
T
HE growing cycle begins with planting the seed, and in most of the 27 beet-produc-ing states planting takes place in the spring ofthe year.,:, Ground preparation, however, often
begins in the preceding fall, when farmers may
spread fertilizer on their land and plow it under.
Fertilize_r may also be applied in the spring. Farmers know that a good seed bed ranks in importance with good seeds, an abundance of
plant food, and sufficient water. Therefore,
planting preparations are directed at getting a *Because of the different climate in California and Ariwna, practices there provide an exception to the general rule. Some planting is done in midwinter; some is in the fall, for harvest in the next spring. In
some California areas all major operations- plowing, fertilizing, planting, thinning, harvesting- may be
go-ing on simultaneously in adjoining fields at certain times of the year. For simplifying this discussion of growing sugarbeets, the spring-planting and fall-harvesting cycle of the majority of the beet-growing states is described.
good moisture-holding soil, aerated and free of clods. Harrows and land-levelers are among the equipment used for preparing a gardenlike seed bed. Land leveling aids irrigation and drainage. In irrigated areas, furrows are formed to direct water between rows.
After the ground is fully prepared, planting takes place. This is done as early in the spring as climate and weather permit. The sugar com-pany supplies the seed and makes certain it is the variety best adapted to the particular soil and climatic conditions. Sugarbeet seeds now are usually planted at the rate of 2 to 6 seeds per foot in rows varying from 20 to 32 inches apart. Four- to six-row drills place the seeds from one to one and one-half inches deep. The young plants emerge in about five days.
The sprouting of four leaves, about a month after planting, is the signal for thinning. Since a beet needs "elbow room" to grow fully, ex-cess plants must be removed and only single plants at intervals of 8 to 12 inches in the row should be left to grow.
In the past, thinning was done entirely by hand. Workers first used short-handled hoes to remove sections, or "blocks," of excess plants. Then they used their fingers to remove all but one plant in each remaining clump. In recent years advancements have substantially reduced these hand-labor operations.
One example of the advancements is im-provement of beet seeds. The normal beet plant produces its blossoms in clusters. Each cluster results in a seed ball containing several seeds held closely together in a corklike material.
When planted whole, as was the case until the I 930's, the multigerm seed ball would produce a number of plants close together, often inter-twined, thus requiring hand thinning. The first attack on this problem was the development of a method to reduce, by mechanical means, the number of seeds in a seed ball. The second big improvement came in the field of genetics-the development of a beet plant that produced only a single seed in each seed ball (monogerm seed). By the mid- I 960's, nearly all growers were planting single-germ varieties exclusively.
These improvements in seeds had profound effects on sugarbeet production. For one thing, they permitted a marked reduction in the amount of seed required. Instead of planting 18 to 20 pounds of seed per acre, it became pos-sible to use precision planters and plant only l to 4 pounds per acre. More importantly, the elimination of tight clusters of plants paved the way for a practical "stand reducer" or thin-ning machine.
Earlier models of the machine consisted of a series of revolving blades so spaced that ex-cess plants were removed as the thinner moved down the row. Scientists have lately developed an electronic thinner which permits growers to obtain optimum stands from a minimum amount of precision planted seed. Other me-chanical devices are also used for cultivating and weed control.
One of the most significant advances in weed eradication came in the late I 950's through ex-tensive experiments with chemical weed killers. Liquid fertilizers for plant enrichment are
sometimes applied with weed killers in a single operation, a further step in reducing labor re-quirements for the spring and early summer phases of beet production.
Irrigation is practiced in the beet fields in the Great Plains areas, and in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast states. This is begun as soon as needed, often to aid in germinating the seed. Frequent light irrigations usually are more ef-fective than a few heavy applications.
During the last few weeks of growth, beet samples are taken to factory chemists who test them for sugar content. When the beets ap-proach maximum tonnage and sugar content, they are ready for harvest. This occurs late in September or early in October in most states.
Only a few years ago, beets were harvested entirely by hand. Now all harvesting is done mechanically by various types of equipment. In a single operation a machine can cut off the tops, lift the beets from the ground, and convey them into a truck running alongside. Machines also are widely used to harvest the beet tops separately ahead of the roots. Complete mecha-nization of the harvest, plus advances in other phases of sugarbeet production, now enable some farmers to produce their entire crop without any hand labor.
Thinning the crop by machine
The farmer delivers his beets from the field to the factory or an outlying receiving station. Substantial initial payments are made to farmers during or immediately after harvest. Final pay-ment is made after the proceeds from the sale of sugar produced from the crop have been determined.
The close link between sugar company and beet grower is an important reason for the con-tinued agricultural progress of the beet sugar industry. Sugar companies maintain research departments and staffs of trained agriculturalists who bring the results of company and govern-ment research directly to the farmer.
Scientific research in improved farm prac-tices, better seed, and greater mechanization has greatly increased the efficiency of sugarbeet production. For example, in 1900 the average yield of beets was 6.4 tons per harvested acre, in I 930 it was l l.9, and by 1970 an average U.S. yield of 18.5 tons of beets to the acre had been attained. Sugar produced per planted acre for the five-year period 1961-65 was more than 40 percent greater than for the five-year period
1931-35, thirty years earlier.
The continuously increasing efficiency of American sugarbeet producers helps to assure a full sugar bowl for American consumers.
Extracting Beet Sugar
D
URING sugar-making or "campaign" time, abeet sugar processing plant is a center of intensive activity-inside and out. Truckloads and railroad cars full of beets are constantly arriving. Inside the plant, modern machinery is extracting pure crystallized sucrose by a com-plex and continuous process. In the laboratories more than a thousand daily tests are being made at various stages of the sugar-making process.
At the beginning of the harvest, beets are processed almost as quickly as they are brought in. But as winter approaches, in most beet-producing states harvesting is rushed to com-pletion. High piles of beets outside the plant grow wider and wider until they may cover many acres.
Outside the processing facility are also large stockpiles of lime rock, coal, and coke. About 60 pounds of coal ( or its equivalent) and 35 pounds of lime rock and coke are needed to produce a hundred pounds of sugar from about 650 pounds of beets.
Briefly, the main processing steps include washing and slicing the beets; extracting the sugar in liquid form; purifying the resulting juice; concentrating it through evaporation; crystallizing; separating crystals from the re-maining liquid; drying, sorting, and packaging the crystals.
Beets are floated into the factory in flumes of warm water, which partly washes the beets while they are moving. Inside the facility, the beets are again washed thoroughly before they are sliced. High-speed revolving knives cut the beets into slices called cassettes which resem-ble shoestring potatoes.
Next the sugar is extracted in liquid form. This takes place in a diffuser, which may be a eries of tanks or a single large tank in which the beet slices arc moved uphill against hot wa-ter coming down. The )'lot wawa-ter removes the sugar from the plant cells by osmosis.
Two products come from the diffuser. One is beet pulp-the cassettes with the sugar ex-tracted. This pulp goes to a pulp press and then to a drier, for later use as a livestock feed. The other product is raw juice, a liquid containing
IO to 15 percent sugar.
The raw juice starts the first of two trips through purification tanks known as
carbona-... mountains of beets
tors. Here, milk of lime is added to remove from the juice certain soluble and suspended
matter other than sugar. Carbon dioxide is then bubbled through the mixture, causing the lime
and nonsugars to join together in an insoluble form. These solids are then removed by filters and the liquid is known as thin juice.
Removing excess water is the next step, and
this is done by running the juice through a
se-ries of five evaporators, which boil down the
liquid until it is 50 to 65 percent sugar. It is
now evaporator thick juice. This receives
fur-ther filtering, and is then ready for crystallizing.
Crystallizing takes place in huge tanks called
vacuum pans which are nearly two stories high. To prevent caramelizing, the liquid is boiled at
a relatively low temperature. This is achieved
by reducing the air pressure within the tank.
At a certain stage, crystallization is induced by
adding a small amount of pulverized sugar to
the liquid. This is called "seeding." Growth of
crystals is controlled carefully by a skilled
tech-nician as the mass within the tank becomes a
thick mixture of crystals and molasses.
When the sugar-boiler decides crystals have
grown to the desired size, the process is
stopped. The golden brown mixture of molasses
and sugar crystals is called white fillmass.
The fill mass is sent to high-speed centrifugal
machines where the white crystals are separated
from the molasses. A metal centrifugal basket
A spotless factory for making pure beet sugar
lined with a fine screen whirls at an outside
speed of more than two miles a minute. As the
brown molasses flies through the screen, the
crystals are retained in the basket. A spray of
hot water removes the last traces of molasses
and suddenly, here is pure white sugar!
The molasses is piped to another part of the
factory for further processing and some is later
added to beet pulp.
The damp sugar passes through a huge drum
called a granulator, where it is dried in a
cur-rent of air, first warm and then cold. The
thor-oughly dried sugar is screened to sort the
crys-tals according to sizes before it goes to storage
bins or to the packaging department.
Automatic equipment packages granulated
beet sugar in attractive one- to 25-pound
con-tainers for household use and in
individual-serving packets for restaurant and similar use.
Cubed, powdered, and brown sugars are also
put in household size packages. For food
manu-facturers and processors, beet sugar of various
types and grain sizes is available in 100-pound
The Importance
of Beet Sugar
S
UGAR has universal appeal-it tastes good and it makes many other foods taste bet-ter and look more appetizing. It offsets salti-ness and acidity, enhances natural flavors, acts as a preservative, and improves the appearance of many foods. It is highly soluble and easy to use. Energy is the first requirement of life, and sugar provides the body with usable energy within minutes after it is eaten.In food chemistry, sucrose is classed as a disaccharide. The body converts sucrose into two monosaccharides or simple sugars, glucose and fructose. These simple sugars enter the bloodstream and can be used promptly for en-ergy. What is not used at once is carried to the body's storehouses, the liver and the muscles, where the simple sugars are converted to gly-cogen, animal starch. When an energy supply is needed, the liver converts its stored glycogen to blood sugar and pours it back into the blood-stream. This blood sugar is carried to the mus-cles, which are also capable of manufacturing and storing glycogen, and releasing this energy during muscular action.
From infancy to old age, sugar has an impor-tant place in the diet of every normal human being. Doctors recommend sucrose (sugar) in the baby's formula-not only for its energy but also because its presence permits more effective use of proteins and other nutrients in the for-mula. Sugar is an effective source of energy for elderly persons. It is well known that athletes frequently eat sugar or a sugar-containing food just before a contest.
The importance of sugar to the food-process-ing industry cannot be overemphasized. It is a pure, low-cost, essential ingredient to the food freezer and canner, the preserve and jelly mak-er, the baker, the confectioner, and the ice cream and soft drink manufacturer.
Many of the so-called "convenience foods" which require a minimum of preparation in the home are packaged with sugar already mixed with other ingredients. Sugar is used for curing meats, in flavoring syrups, and in such varied products as baked beans, mayonnaise, pickles, and chewing gum. Practically all the products made from the great food grains of the world-such as bread and breakfast cereals-are made more palatable by the addition of sugar.
The amount of sugar used in non-food prod-ucts totals only about one percent of all sugar consumed in this country. Yet it contributes to our industrial greatness and well-being. Millions of pounds of sugar and its derivatives go into medicines, for example. Sugar is used in such unsuspected ways as in the silvering of mirrors. Beet sugar molasses, an important by-prod-uct, is used in the making of yeast, vinegar, and lactic and citric acids. The last is an important flavoring and is also used as a preservative in the preparation of blood plasma.
Monosodium glutamate, another beet sugar by-product, enhances the natural flavor of many foods. It has long been used in many commer-cially prepared foods, and now is finding in-creasing popularity in home cooking.
Through research in sucrochemistry,
scien-tists are discovering new products that may
have wide industrial applications.
However, sugar will always be primarily a quick-energy food and a basic ingredient in all types of cooking and food preparation.
The fundamental importance of sugar and
the process of photosynthesis by which plants manufacture it was accurately described by Dr.
William J. Robbins when he was Director of
the New York Botanical Garden and Professor
of Botany at Columbia University.
"Sugar is the foundation of life, the substance upon which, in the last analysis, our existence and the development of modern civilization rest. . . . If you eat a beefsteak . . . you are consum-ing food that was at one time sugar. lf you drive an automobile, you are using some of the sun's energy originally fixed in sugar made by plants . . . . This energy, transferred from the original sugar to the substances derived from it, is released from the food you eat or from the gasoline burned in the automobile. Without its presence in the body, the heart would cease to beat, the blood would fail to flow, life it~elf would stop."
America's Sugar Supplies
P
RACTICALLY every national government in the world assumes the responsibility for an adequate supply of sugar for its people. This concern has led to various kinds of legislation to ensure dependable sugar sources. Such laws usually have included provisions for encour-agement of sugar production within that coun-try as well as establishment of foreign sources of this vital commodity. Countries that pro-duce sugar in excess of their own requirements have sought, logically enough, reliable markets for their surplus production.This concern about sugar supplies and mar-kets has resulted in a variety of agreements be-tween and among nations. A general interna-tional sugar agreement is designed to regulate marketing of virtually all the world's sugar not already affected by other arrangements.
The present form of sugar legislation in the U.S. evolved after 145 years of laws affecting
sugar. George Washington's first Congress
en-acted the first such law, a tariff designed to help finance the new government. The primary objective of the tariff gradually changed from one of raising revenue to one of regulating sources of the U.S. sugar supply. The change in aim occurred as sugar-producing areas came under the American flag and as preferential
treatment to certain foreign sugar-producing
areas became a part of national policy.
Through the years, numerous changes were
made in the tariff. From time to time, certain foreign countries were given lower rates than others-partly for the purpose of influencing sources of supply. Still, American consumers were at times plagued by shortages of supply
and skyrocketing prices. At other times,
do-mestic producers (and foreign suppliers) were plagued by glutted markets and low prices.
Commis-sion recommended that a system of marketing quotas be instituted.
This recommendation was followed by enact-ment of the Jones-Costigan Act in 1934, which became the pattern for later laws including the Sugar Act in effect today. The basic purposes of this legislation, proven sound by the test of time, have remained the same:
( 1) To assure American consumers an ade-quate supply of sugar at reasonable prices.
(2) To encourage foreign trade by provid-ing a market in this country for sugar from for-eign nations.
( 3) To provide a healthy economic climate for a competitive domestic sugar industry.
The quota system has made possible
repeat-ed reductions in the tariff. Today the sugar
tariff is only one-fourth as much as in 1933. Under the present legislation, about 60 per-cent of our total annual sugar needs are sup-plied by domestic producers. The privilege of supplying the balance has been reserved for foreign countries.
J n addition to the sugarbeet producing states, domestic "areas" include mainland cane
(Flor-ida and Louisiana), Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and
the Virgin lsla_nds. Foreign countries with
quotas permitting them to sell sugar in the
United States include the Republic of the Phil-ippines (with the largest foreign quota) and 31 other countries.
Under the Sugar Act, the U.S. beet sugar
industry supplies about one-third of our total
annual sugar needs-about half of the total supplied by all domestic areas. Of the total
mainland production, the beet sugar industry
is responsible for nearly 75 percent. The
indus-try's production capacity far exceeds the quota
assigned to it by the Sugar Act.
The key role of the domestic producing
in-dustry (and the Sugar Program) in providing
dependable sugar supplies, so essential to the
national welfare, was dramatically
demon-strated during a world-wide sugar crisis in 1963. Testifying before Congressional
commit-tees at that time, the Under Secretary of
Agri-culture said:
"Finally, let me say that all of us should be grateful for our sugar legislation over the years and the assurance it has made possible for sug-ar supplies at this time. It should be
abundant-ly clear that U.S. sugar supplies would be
in-finitely more precarious if we had not had the protection of this law and the quota system over the past 30 years . . . . The protection that the Sugar Act has afforded over the years has
maintained a healthy and growing domestic
sugar industry which is indispensable in such a period of tight world supplies."
Consumers have found that in normal times, as well as in times of stress, the beet sugar in-dustry provides the necessary assurance of hav-ing adequate supplies of this vital product.
Historical Roots of the Industry
D
IA RIES of Spanish explorers report thatCalifornia Indians made a kind of candy
from wild sugarbeets, but in Europe occurred
the true beginning of the beet sugar industry.
In 1747, a German chemist named Andreas
Marggraf first proved that the sugarbeet
con-tained sucrose and that it could be crystallized.
Forty years later one of his pupils, Franz Karl
Achard, demonstrated that production of sugar
from the beet was commercially practical. With
the financial assistance of King Wilhelm II of
Prussia, the world's first beet sugar factory was
erected in the German state of Silesia and
be-gan operations in 1802.
Production of sugar from European-grown
sugarbeets attracted the attention of Napoleon
Bonaparte, whose overseas supplies of this
high-energy food were cut off by the British
fleet. In 1811, he decreed the planting of
79,000 acres of sugarbeets and the erection of
beet sugar factories in France. When Napoleon
fell in 1815, the beet sugar industry in France
received a severe setback as stores of
slave-1870: the first successful U.S. factory ... today, a modern beet sugar processing plaf!t
produced sugar from the West Indies flooded
the markets of Europe.
But the advantages of having a dependable
supply of home-produced sugar, not subject to
foreign influences, had been proved; and the
agricultural benefits stemming from sugarbeet
production were obvious. And so the industry
in France was revived.
Beet sugar production in France, Germany,
and elsewhere in Europe in the l 830's aroused
interest in America. A Beet Sugar Society was
organized in Philadelphia, and in 1836 the
group sent a representative to Europe to
in-vestigate the matter. In 1838, two beet sugar
factories were erected-at White Pigeon,
Mich-igan, ,and Northampton, Massachusetts. Neither
venture was a success and both were abandoned.
One of the great sagas of pioneering efforts
to establish the beet sugar industry in the
United States was written in the 1850's by the
Mormons. Seeking to establish a self-sufficient
community on the shores of the Great Salt
Lake, they found lack of sugar a handicap.
For $12,500, they purchased
sugar-extract-ing machinery in France and shipped it to New
Orleans. From there it went up the Mississippi
and Missouri Rivers by steamboat to Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas. Then came a long and
arduous haul of the machinery in 52 especially
built ox-drawn wagons. But the Mormons
lacked the technical knowledge and skill to
achieve success, and the project was given up.
In all, eight ventures were launched between
1838 and 1870-before success came.
To Ebenezer Herrick Dyer goes the credit
for establishing the beet sugar industry in the
United States on a successful basis. In 1870,
he and a group of associates built at Alvarado,
California, a beet sugar factory which became
a firm commercial success. Mr. Dyer's success
spurred efforts of others, and by 1900, in 11
states from New York to the West Coast, 30
beet sugar factories were operating successfully.
In 1876, a Colorado pioneer named Peter
Magnes, who had come West during the gold
rush of 1858-59, prophesied: "lf we had beet
sugar factories in Colorado ... I imagine
Col-orado farmers would produce more gold than
all the miners in the mountains."
Now some 1.5 million acres are planted each
year to sugarbeets in 27 states. Because of the
practice of crop rotation, a total of four to six
million acres of American soil receive the
ben-efits inherent in sugarbeet production. The
yearly crop is worth hundreds of millions of
dollars in cash income to farmers and farm
workers. Sugar companies also pay more
hun-dreds of millions in wages and for
transporta-tion, electricity, lime rock, coal, bags, taxes,
machinery, and other goods and services.
The annual yield of an estimated twelve to
fifteen million tons of by-products-tops, pulp,
and molasses-has helped to sustain a thriving
livestock feeding industry in some western
areas. Location of beet sugar factories in the
regions where beets are grown has provided a
stabilizing influence on employment.
This is the story of the sugarbeet. From
sun-shine, air, and water, it provides American
con-sumers with a necessary product-and each
year as a new crop is produced, it creates new
