[Talk-GB] beetroot or beet

[Mark Goodge]

On 10/01/2017 01:44, Andy Townsend wrote:
> On 10/01/17 01:20, David Groom wrote:
>> ...
>> Tag info shows 579 ways tagged with crop = beet, of these 572 are in
>> northern Italy added by 3 users, so its probably quite easy to ask
>> what exactly they meant by "beet" , and retag these existing ways if
>> they actually should be beetroot.
>
> In the UK I could hazard a guess as to whether sugarbeet or something
> else based on the proximity to one of British Sugar's plants such as
> Newark or Peterborough, but in Northern Italy asking the mapper
> definitely seems like a good idea.

In British (or, at least, English; I'm not familiar with Scottish or 
Welsh) agricultural practice, "beet" alone is generally short for sugar 
beet. Beetroot isn't normally abbreviated, not least because doing so 
would risk confusion with sugar beet. Fodder beet (aka field beet) is 
typically called mangelwurzel in England.

> Another caveat in the UK - crops are often rotated (and planted based on
> price expectation) so what is beet one year is barley the next, and
> perhaps oil-seed rape after that.  Essentially, where this variation
> happens it'd be difficult to trust any "crop" tag over a year old.

I agree; I think labelling annual crops is probably rather pointless in 
the UK. It's probably worth labelling perennials, such as orchard crops, 
vineyards, grassland etc, as these typically remain the same over a 
period of many years (centuries, even, in some cases). But there are 
very few circumstances where the same annual crop will be grown 
repeatedly in the same field. And keeping up to date with the changes is 
too big an ask, really.

Mark