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Montana growers expect above average beet harvest

By: Tom Lutey, The Billings Gazette

1-15-2010

With profits at a 28-year high and a bumper crop in the ground, Montana's sugar industry expects sweet profits as other commodity prices sour.

Sugar beets began coming out of the ground last week in Hardin. Prices are nearing $50 a ton, which Montana farmers haven't received for their crop since 1980.

"Right now, it's going to be a definite record crop in the Billings area, a 31-tons-per-acre average yield," said Mike Hoffer of Western Sugar Cooperative. "I haven't been around forever, but that's about the best year by two tons."

In Hardin, seasonal workers at the beet dump unloaded 200 trucks in six hours Thursday. Workers began trucking the beets to the Billings refinery over the weekend for processing, said Western Sugar's Bryan Fandrich.

The refinery needs an early supply of beets to prepare for Oct. 2 when the rest of the cooperative will begin digging up beets. That later harvest will likely take place after the first frost, a crucial weather event that drives up beet sugar content making the crop more valuable than beets harvested pre-frost. For going early, Hardin farmers receive a slightly larger payment to make up for the lower sugar content and lighter yields per acre.

This year's harvest is the earliest Hardin farmer Brett Nedens could recall, as he worked a beet digger across family land south of town. The toothy white roots trundled through the machine's puller wheels and onto a giant round Ferris wheel before being dumped into a waiting truck.

Shawn Nedens said the crop yield was above average, though perhaps not a record. The early harvest doubled the number of workers at Nedens Farms to 35. With the price of sugar at record highs, it's a good year to be a beet farmer Nedens said - at least in Montana.

Other farmers in the Western Sugar Cooperative have suffered hail damage. More than 60 percent of the farmers in Colorado and Nebraska were clobbered by hail, Hoffer said. Cooperative members in the Billings refinery area might produce Western Sugar's best crops.

Sugar has been a bright spot in agriculture this year, a world sugar shortage driven by drought in India and cane sugar ethanol production in Brazil has driven up the price even in the United States where sugar is not in short supply.

And American food companies are using more sugar as consumers grow weary of high fructose corn syrup. Pepsi reintroduced beverages sweetened with crystal sugar, which hadn't been a player in the beverage industry for 25 years. Starbucks stopped using corn syrup in its bakery goods. Kraft Foods also began cutting corn syrup out of some snacks and crackers.

Doctors have called the health differences benefits of sugar over high fructose corn syrup dubious. The corn sweetener industry argues that its product is no worse, but some consumers disagree.

A third of consumers last year told Multi-sponsor Surveys they were staying away from high fructose corn syrup. Roughly 37 percent of mothers, key customers to the nation's food economy, said they steered clear of high fructose corn syrup. In March, first lady Michelle Obama said she wouldn't feed products containing high fructose corn syrup to her daughters.

It's good to see sugar doing well, said Russ Fulmer, of Sidney Sugars. A year ago, contracted sugar beet acres in the northeastern part of the state were woefully low. Attractive prices for wheat and barley was pulling farmers out of beets. High paying oil jobs were luring farmhands away.

American Crystal Sugar, which owns the Sidney refinery, was talking about shutting down the plant if farmers didn't agree to plant more. The number of acres planted jumped from 14,000 in 2008 to 24,000 this year.

Fulmer said the sugar content of the beets is 18 percent, which is high. The yield per acre is about 28.8 tons, up two tons from 2008.

Sidney farmers will wait until Oct. 1 to begin harvesting.