Economic Uses.—Rough rice or paddy (rice in the hull) is first hulled by machinery and then the grains are polished or whitened. The rice [127] polish, which consists of the powdered outer coats, is a very nourishing cattle food. Saké, the national drink of Japan, is a weak alcoholic liquor brewed from rice. Rice straw is of enormous use in Asia, being employed for hundreds of purposes, some of them as unexpected as the making of bags, ropes and sandals. Rough rice and clean rice are the common commercial articles.
Rye (Secale cereale) is cultivated in all northern countries. The stalk grows up to six feet, and the ears are double-rowed with a long beard. The grain is dark green and very mealy, and furnishes a good bread. It is cultivated in the cold climates of northern Europe, especially in Russia. Only small amounts are grown in the United States.
The leading rye states, in order of yields, are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New York and Minnesota, which together raised nearly two-thirds of the crop.
It is usually sown at the same time as winter wheat, or earlier, one and a half to two bushels of seed per acre, and its habits and treatment are essentially the same. Its yield per acre is from twenty to fifty bushels, weighing fifty-six pounds. It is noted for its ability to thrive and yield fairly on soils too poor for the more important cereals. Rye is used for breadmaking, live stock food, and in the manufacture of malt and alcoholic beverages. It is the chief breadstuff in parts of Russia, Scandinavia and Germany. It also furnishes valuable pasturage late in the fall and early spring, for which it is extensively sown where early tame grasses do not prosper. Its straw is in considerable demand for various uses, such as the making of paper, filling horse collars, for packing and otherwise.
Sugar-Cane (Saccharum officinarium), a tree-like grass, grows nine to fifteen feet high, and contains in its pith a sweet sap, from which our raw sugar is obtained. The sugar-cane is a native of the East Indies, but it is now grown in India, Cuba, Hawaii, Java, Brazil, Mauritius, Louisiana and other parts of the tropics and subtropics. India’s large production is consumed locally and enters little into export trade. Louisiana produces all made in the United States, except ten thousand to fifteen thousand tons, annually, from Texas. Cane for molasses and sirup is grown more or less in all of the Gulf Coast states.
Method of Cultivation.—It requires a fertile soil, rich in humus. Sandy and clay loams are both good, but alluvial soils are best. In preparing for sugar cane the soil is thrown up by plows in beds six to seven feet wide. In planting, furrows are opened, and in these the cane stalks, one, two or three are laid side by side, covering by plows. It is cultivated largely after the manner of corn, care being taken to leave the rows well ridged up by the last cultivation, to facilitate drainage. The quantity of cane required for planting an acre ranges from four to six tons. Two and sometimes three crops or cuttings are had from one planting. Yields of forty to forty-five tons of stripped cane per acre are not uncommon, although half those quantities are considered creditable averages for large plantations.
Manufacture.—After harvesting, sugar cane is carried (usually by rail) promptly to the mill, where the juice is pressed out. Modern mills have nine rollers, arranged in three sets. The trash, or bagasse, is almost dry when it leaves the last rollers and is used as fuel to run the mill. The juice is boiled down, generally in vacuum pans heated by steam, and the sugar crystals which form are separated from the molasses in centrifugals.
Products.—Raw cane sugar, brown to yellowish in color, produced by evaporation of the juice in open pans (muscovados), and crystals from vacuum pans are both important commercially. White sugar, granulated, loaf and pulverized, as commonly sold, is more nearly chemically pure than most other articles of commerce. Molasses, from cane juice boiled in open pans, is palatable for human food, and, like all cane molasses, is fermented and distilled to make rum.
Sorghum is a cultivated grass of many varieties (Panicum, Setaria, Andropogon, etc.) Guinea corn, kaffir corn, broom corn and other names are employed to distinguish the different kinds. They may, however, be divided into two classes: the saccharine or sweet sorghums and the non-saccharine. The sweet sorghums are grown for making sirup, but principally for forage and hay, and yield heavily, from five to fifteen tons per acre. The seed being somewhat bitter is not entirely relished by animals, but it finds a ready market for seeding purposes. For hay about a bushel of seed is sown to the acre, and for fodder and seed about ten pounds per acre is planted in rows and cultivated.
Kaffir Corn is by far the most valuable of the non-saccharine sorghums. Its grain, of which it yields from thirty to sixty bushels per acre, has a feeding value approximating that of Indian corn, and its forage after the seed heads have been removed is valuable feed for live stock.