Word: sugaring
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...significant problems--but this play deadens any thought with its almost endless barrage of such problems. The half-minute of slaughter at the end doesn't reduce anything to manageable size--any solution gets lost in the debris. By the time the last Indian falls, even a plain sugar doughnut would have been more satisfying...
Benedict makes a quick trip by pickup truck around his 3,500 acres of wheat and sugar beets. At each of many stops he whips out a pocket calculator and does some rapid figuring before giving the hired hands orders on, say, exactly how much pesticide to spray on each field. By 8 a.m. he is heading home to start the most important part of his day: several hours spent at a rolltop desk in his small study. There Benedict goes over computer print-outs analyzing his plantings acre by acre: inputs of seed, fertilizer, irrigation water, machine time; output...
...five years Pat has been expanding, and trying to beat the wild fluctuations in crop prices, in another way: bringing to the farm lands the concept known in industry as vertical integration. Like other growers, he resented having to take his beets for milling to the nearby American Crystal Sugar Co. plant. One reason: the company's officers, then based in Denver, insisted on shutting down the mills on weekends, even during harvest time when beets must be ground up quickly before they rot. Recalls Pat: "We were at the mercy of people a thousand miles away who just were...
Benedict estimates that it costs $300 an acre to raise sugar beets. At an average yield of 15 tons an acre, and a depressed price this year of around $21 a ton, the typical beet grower will receive $315 an acre, producing a thin profit in view of the heavy investment required. But Benedict's mechanization and tight management enable him to grow 20 tons an acre, worth $420, enough to promise a worthwhile return...
...harvest periods a dozen migrants from Texas or local high school students. The primary work force is the family: Sons Michael, 20, Blane, 18, Kurt, 13, and Daughters Stephanie, 19, and Lisa, 16. Even eleven-year-old David drives a tractor pulling a harvester that yanks three tons of sugar beets out of the ground every minute. All earn $3 an hour. During the wheat harvest each of them worked eight hours a day in staggered shifts so that some member of the family was in the fields 24 hours a day. Says Pat: "The kids learn that...