Many
projects failed; but where public subsidy, private sacrifice, and promising
natural conditions existed, some finally succeeded. Northern Utah's Bear River Valley Project had poor success until it was taken over after
1902 by the Utah Idaho Sugar Company. The Strawberry Project - a federal
reclamation program launched in 1905 - opened 16,000 new acres in Utah
Valley. The long-range impact of these projects was apparent in the
high agricultural production of Box Elder and Utah counties throughout
the twentieth century.
Indebtedness
was another evidence that Utah farmers were seeking new benefits from
the land. Debt had been nearly unknown in the earlier period; but in
1890 twenty percent of farms were mortgaged, and by 1920 nearly fifty
percent of Utah's farmers labored under heavy debts. The commercial
shift was also apparent in an aggressive quest for cash crops. Sugar
beets made the biggest difference. Beginning with one processing plant
at Lehi in 1891, twenty were built throughout the state by 1918. In
1920, Utah farmers produced $28,000,000 worth of sugar, giving them
third place nationally and making sugar production second only to mining
within Utah. Dairying, truck crops, orchards, and canneries also flourished.
With more than half the state's canneries, a modest meat packing industry,
and enough milling to make it one of the ten leading centers nationally, Ogden was easily the state's most important agricultural manufacturing
center.