Sugar-Beet Industry

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 69, 14 December 1937, Page 7

Sugar-Beet Industry

S.

PEDERSEN.

Sir, — In auswer to "Away From It All": Eighteen ponths ago I was visiting a cousin in ^Montana, U.S.A., at a town called Havre. One day he said, "We will go and have a look at the sugar-beet relinery. " He took me to a small town not far away, called Chenuk. Being in America, I expected to see something very big, but .1 was surprised .when he showed me a small place about half the size of the Heretaunga dairy faetory. He said they fatten thousands of pigs every year on i the by-products of the sugar-beet; he is in the butchering business and buys a good many of these pigs., so he should know. It was summertime, and the refinery wasn't working then, but I saw the sugar-beet growing and I also saw the kind of soil it was growing on; a large number of growers in U.S.A. have to tpay for water to grow these erops. We have far better soil in Hawke's Bay than what I saw used'for growing sugar-beet in U.S.A. Labour cost in U.S.A. is just as high as it is here but the workers work harder there. If sugar-beet can be grown here as well, and with as big erops as mangolds are grown it would overcome the high price of land and the high eost of labour. It is an industry that would employ a lot of labour in the wintertime, when the refining would be done. The by-products would be useful just at the time of the year when the dairy-farmer is short of food for his pigs, and he could rear a lot more pigs and have them ready for fattening when his cows come in. — Yours. etc..

Pakowhai, Dec. 13., 1937.