Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/168

162 is extracted there is a pulpy residue from which the liquid is pressed out. This pulp is very valuable as food for stock. Some factories have dairies in connection with them. The experiments already made have been very satisfactory. The pulp is probably the cheapest food that can be used considering the amount of nutrition. The leaves are also valuable as food, but probably still more valuable as a fertilizer. Sugar takes nothing from the ground. It is made from the water vapor and carbon dioxide of the air. But the tissue of the beet contains considerable potash, magnesia, phosphoric acid and nitrogen, and all these are removed to a greater extent by the leaves than by the roots. If then the leaves are left on the ground or are plowed under, the soil is much less exhausted than if they are taken away. For beet-raising the cultivation of the soil must be very carefully attended to. This cultivation has a very beneficial effect on other crops grown in rotation with the beet, hence the advantages of beet-growing are indirect as well as direct.

The cost of raising beets is considerable, but, on the other hand, the returns are large, and the profits may be estimated as on the average twenty dollars an acre.