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More sugar from graded fields
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CURRENT TOPICS.
[J. F. [.
The technique of expanding air to cause a sudden temperature drop constitutes a third means for producing snow investigated under a current snow research program being conducted by the General Electric Company in conjunction with the U. S. Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories at Bradley Beach, N. J. and the Army and Navy air forces. Other means developed for making snow include scientist Vincent J. Schaefer's dry-ice technique, in which the seeding of a cloud with dry-ice causes ice nuclei to appear resulting in formation of snow, and the foreign-nuclei technique, in which certain materials, foreign to snow but resembling it in crystalline structure, actually "fool" water particles in a supercooled cloud by serving as nuclei and growing into snow crystals at the expense of the water particles. R. H. O.
More Sugar from Graded Fields.--"Turtlebacking," as a descriptive term, gives a good idea of a new method of handling the drainage problem in some of the low lying and fiat sugarcane fields in Louisiana. On some soils, at least, the U. S. Department of Agriculture finds the increased sugar yield from a single crop more than pays the expense of "turtle backing." The Soil Conservation Service is investigating the possibilities on other types of soil. In the'Sugar Bowl country, drainage is a No. 1 problem of many plantations. Ditches have to be kept cleared. The material removed from the ditches tends to build banks or small leeves beside the ditches, hindering drainage from the fields and causing trouble in operating machinery. Turtlebacking is also called cut crowning by agricultural engineers. As the popular name suggests, it consists in grading all the land between two lateral ditches so that there is a low crown half way between with water free to flow to the ditches. Where ditch banks have been raised by repeated clearing of the waterways, this may call for moving considerable soil to the slightly raised center of the turtle back. Once the grading is completed most of the maintenance can be done by ploughing and dragging when fields are replanted. In the main, turtle backing really amounts to restoring to the sugarcane fields the fine soil that the heavy rains wash into the drainage ditches. In the first field on which turtlebacking was tested on the St. Delphine Plantation, the improved drainage resulted in just about doubling the corn yield and an increase in the yield of cane equivalent to more than 900 pounds of sugar to the acre, or more than $50 an acre in the value of the crop. SCS technicians are experimenting with various combinations of plows and graders to find the most economical way to turtleback the sugar fields that need this treatment. R.H.O. Synthetic Fibers Other Than Rayon Increasing Rapidly in Importance.Synthetic fibers other than cellulose, in their infancy before World War ll, are becoming increasingly important in the textile economy of the United States, according to a survey just made at the United States Department of Agriculture's Southern Regional Research Laboratory. The survey, which brings together the first figures to be made public on the consumption of these fibers, is part of a study of trends in the consumption of fibers in the United States, being made by Robert B. Evans and Barkley Meadows in connection with the research program on cotton utilization of the Bureau of Agricultural and Industrial Chemistry.
CURRENT TOPICS.
[J. F. [.
The technique of expanding air to cause a sudden temperature drop constitutes a third means for producing snow investigated under a current snow research program being conducted by the General Electric Company in conjunction with the U. S. Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories at Bradley Beach, N. J. and the Army and Navy air forces. Other means developed for making snow include scientist Vincent J. Schaefer's dry-ice technique, in which the seeding of a cloud with dry-ice causes ice nuclei to appear resulting in formation of snow, and the foreign-nuclei technique, in which certain materials, foreign to snow but resembling it in crystalline structure, actually "fool" water particles in a supercooled cloud by serving as nuclei and growing into snow crystals at the expense of the water particles. R. H. O.
More Sugar from Graded Fields.--"Turtlebacking," as a descriptive term, gives a good idea of a new method of handling the drainage problem in some of the low lying and fiat sugarcane fields in Louisiana. On some soils, at least, the U. S. Department of Agriculture finds the increased sugar yield from a single crop more than pays the expense of "turtle backing." The Soil Conservation Service is investigating the possibilities on other types of soil. In the'Sugar Bowl country, drainage is a No. 1 problem of many plantations. Ditches have to be kept cleared. The material removed from the ditches tends to build banks or small leeves beside the ditches, hindering drainage from the fields and causing trouble in operating machinery. Turtlebacking is also called cut crowning by agricultural engineers. As the popular name suggests, it consists in grading all the land between two lateral ditches so that there is a low crown half way between with water free to flow to the ditches. Where ditch banks have been raised by repeated clearing of the waterways, this may call for moving considerable soil to the slightly raised center of the turtle back. Once the grading is completed most of the maintenance can be done by ploughing and dragging when fields are replanted. In the main, turtle backing really amounts to restoring to the sugarcane fields the fine soil that the heavy rains wash into the drainage ditches. In the first field on which turtlebacking was tested on the St. Delphine Plantation, the improved drainage resulted in just about doubling the corn yield and an increase in the yield of cane equivalent to more than 900 pounds of sugar to the acre, or more than $50 an acre in the value of the crop. SCS technicians are experimenting with various combinations of plows and graders to find the most economical way to turtleback the sugar fields that need this treatment. R.H.O. Synthetic Fibers Other Than Rayon Increasing Rapidly in Importance.Synthetic fibers other than cellulose, in their infancy before World War ll, are becoming increasingly important in the textile economy of the United States, according to a survey just made at the United States Department of Agriculture's Southern Regional Research Laboratory. The survey, which brings together the first figures to be made public on the consumption of these fibers, is part of a study of trends in the consumption of fibers in the United States, being made by Robert B. Evans and Barkley Meadows in connection with the research program on cotton utilization of the Bureau of Agricultural and Industrial Chemistry.