BEET’S VALUE TO BRITAIN

Northern Advocate, 28 July 1934, Page 8

BEET’S VALUE TO BRITAIN

The way in , which an industry once regarded as a sideline may become 1 he sheet anchor of a country is’illustrated by the beet growing industry in Britain. The report of the governing association is particularly interesting to New Zealanders, in view of the efforts which are being made to develop the manufacture of ghee by the dairying industry in New Zealand and its export to India, Burma and other Eastern countries. It is shown, that- during the past eight or nine years, Avhen agriculture in Britain has been going through a deflation of values which has brought many farmers to the Verge of ruin, there has been one'

slioot anchor in Iho stnrin— boot. The subsidy allowed the factories to pay a price for the roots which encouraged fanners to undertake the cultivation of a strange crop. Now. at the end' of the subsidy period, it can be I claimed in justification of the policy of subsidisation, as several speakers remarked at the meeting of the British Sugar Beet Society in London, that British farmers are as efficient in licet cultivation as those of any Continental country. The average tonnage per acre has in five years risen from. 7-i to 9, while tin* sugar content is even more satisfactory than in most other countries. The much higher tonnages which are general in the Fen country show that on favourable soils 1G to 17 tons to the acre are by no moans uncommon. and ah average of 12 is not a visionary prospect. The British farmer has thus again shown himself able and willing to learn, and having become proficient as a cultivator of beets, the question which must be answered within a year is, what is to be the future of the industry? The policy of subsidisation by which it was brought into existence has been criticised, and perhaps with justice, as being unnecessarily expensive. That, however, is the greater reason why an industry which has been created at the cost of so many millions should not be jettisoned at the moment when, with proper safeguards, it is about to become i self-shpporting, to the great advantage of agriculture generally. The fact that about 450,000 acres of beets are being grown this year on a system of co-partner-ship with the factories, is held to be sufficient to show how important the crop has become in the calculations of the farmer. By far the greatest proportion of beets for the seventeen factories established in England—there is one in Scotland, also—is grown in the Eastern Counties, where, it is safe to say, the cultivation of the crop has provided wofrk for at least 15,000 additional men, while the /factories have directly employed half as many, and indirectly many thousands more. The crop which was dealt with by the factories last season promptly put over £5,000,000 in cash into the farmers’ pockets. Only those who know how hardpressed farmers have been for •cash to meet their end-of-the-year liabilities can realise how valuable those sugar factory cheques have been. The development of the beet industry in Britain, and the service’ it has rendered the .farming community, despite any objection which may be raised against the provision of a subsidy from the public pocket, should spur New Zealand to explore every avenue which promises to lead to a market for any commodity the country is capable of producing.