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root-crops.
on an average for the whole country, amounts to something more than 4 %,
is subject to somewhat great variations, and is higher in the less cultivated
parts of the country and in those districts where small farming predominates,
but is less on the extensive farms on the plains, whose clayey soils, too,
are less suitable for the cultivation of potatoes than the light earth of the forest
districts. A large proportion of the cultivated ground too, is, devoted to the
cultivation of the potato in those districts where the manufacture of spirits is
carried 011 on a large scale, such as in the Läns of Kristianstad, Blekinge,
Jönköping, Kronoberg, and Skaraborg.
The varieties of potatoes cultivated differ greatly both in appearance and
in taste. In Northern Sweden there have, as a rule, been retained the
old-fashioned, ordinary round sorts with yellow flesh and rich crops, whose
slight power of resistance against disease is of little importance in the districts
mentioned, where potato-disease very seldom occurs; the character of this potato,
however, does not make it suitable for cultivation in more southerly tracts. In
the southern and central parts of the country, on the other hand, the old sorts
of potatoes have been supplanted by newer and more productive varieties, which, in
most cases, possess greater powers of resistance to disease; these varieties have
been introduced from North America, England, and, of låte, especially from
Germany. Among the varieties now more commonly cultivated may be especially
noticed two sorts, which have been much grown in Sweden since the seventies;
the American "Early Rose" potato, which, however, is not capable of offering
much resistance to disease, and the white English Magnum Bonum. In addition,
there are also fairly generally cultivated the early, white table-potato Early
Puritan, the medium-late Up-to-Date, which resembles the Magnum Bonum,
and a number of productive, but coarse, German varieties, very rich in starch,
such as the white Prof. Maercker, Geheimrath Thiel, Richter’s Imperator, and
Silesia.
The cultivation of the sugar-beet, which, in Sweden, was begun as early as
during the second decade of the 19th century, but which cannot be said to
have gained a firm footing in the country before the fifties, has gradually made
great progress and, during the last few decades, has developed enormously.
After the unsuccessful attempts which were made about 1870 to extend the
cultivation of the sugar-beet to Central Sweden, and all beet-sugar factories north
of Skåne soon had to be closed again, the Swedish sugar-beet cultivation was
long restricted to that province, where the natural conditions necessary are
better satisfied than anywhere else in the country. Since the beginning of the
nineties, the cultivation of the sugar-beet has once more been extended and at
the present day is carried on in Halland, Blekinge, Southern Kalmar Län, Öland,
Östergötland, and Västergötland. Since the middle of the nineties, the area devoted
to the cultivation of the sugar-beet has risen from about 18 000 hectares to
nearly 30 000 hectares in 1911, and during the same period, the crop has about
doubled; during the years 1901—10, it amounted to 8 268 808 tons, or 27’8
tons per hectare, figures little inferior to those for the countries which stand
highest in this respect — the Netherlands and Belgium. The percentage of
sugar has been steadily on the increase, so that the amount of raw sugar
obtained has risen from 6"6 % per weight-unit in 1870 to 15’77 % in 1912. The
kind which is cultivated is of the German Klein-Wanzerbener variety, the
seed being mostly obtained from Germany.
In addition to the considerable direct income that the cultivation of the
sugar-beet gives the farmer, it also confers the advantages of a more thorough tilling,
weeding and manuring of the soil than other plants demand and repay by their
crops, so that the cultivation of the beet prepares the way for increased and more
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