Word: beetly
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With lips as red as a sugar beet With arms as white as a 'Muda onion, I'll follow her until my feet Are naught but corns and flaming bunions...
...beet-seed cluster may have as many as six seed germs, and plants grow so close together that the only practical thinning method is with the fingers or with short-handled hoes. Reducing the seed clusters to single seeds had baffled many previous experimenters. Plant breeding had failed. Bainer tried grinding the clusters, but that did not work. Then one day a cluster accidentally slipped under a steel bar. The bar's pressure cracked open both the cluster and Bainer's problem...
Upshot was a machine with a grinding wheel that pushes beet-seed clusters against a "shearing bar." This breaks up the cluster at its natural cell divisions. The cracked-off single seeds, when planted, need no thinning...
Last year 330,000 out of 552,000 western sugar-beet acres were planted with sheared seed. Estimated labor saving: 3,000,000 man hours. This year sheared seed will be used for the entire western region (expected acreage: 1,000,000). Bainer has developed other labor-saving machines for planting and harvesting; he expects to eliminate 90% of the hand labor...
...Bainer's seed splitting enables the beet to compete honestly with cane, it may have a drastic effect on the entire economy of some cane-producing countries...