2020 brings challenges, record sugar content

WORLAND — This year brought its own set of challenges for the Wyoming Sugar sugar beet harvest, but in the end, all beets were harvested and with what is now considered an industry-record sugar content.

Last year, Wyoming Sugar and other sugar cooperatives and companies fought hard freezes. This year there were different battles to fight. Last week, with harvest nearly complete, growers were faced with a forecast of subzero temperatures on Sunday night night.

Hard work, flexible hours and determination by growers and sugar factory employees helped complete the harvest by around noon on Saturday.

Worland set a record for low on Oct. 25 with -10. The previous record for that day was 16 degrees above zero. Temperatures on Saturday, Oct. 24 were at 12 degrees, also a record low. Riverton had a record low on Sunday of -8.

“Everything got in. We finished up just after lunch on Saturday. All the beets have been harvested, thank God,” Wyoming Sugar CEO Mike Greear said.

Ideally, he said, a harvest will start about mid-September with early harvest running two weeks and regular harvest going through October into early November.

“I’ve never seen that,” Greear who has been in the position for four years, said.

“This year brought its own set of challenges. We pre-piled beets earlier. We put more beets on the ground before we even started the factory. We put them on the ground with the right temperature so they would store. I’m glad we did that because when we got to regular harvest we were running just 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. or noon,” Greear said.

Early October temperatures were unseasonably warm and the factory had to limit beets coming in after temperatures reached 50 degrees.

Another problem was that it didn’t cool off at night. However, as temperatures began cooling off and the forecast for the subzero temperatures loomed, Greear said they had the factory pile yard open from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“We had all the beets in by Wednesday with a couple of larger growers finishing up on Saturday,” Greear said.

He said Wyoming Sugar is working each year to get their equipment and staffing to work with growers to shorten the harvest window up to get beets in, in a quicker amount of time.

Greear said the harvest timeline seems to be shortened each year and whatever they can do to limit the risk to the growers is a benefit to the cooperative.

As for the 2020 harvest, Greear said they are at 32 tons per acre, right around the five-year company average, but just shy of their estimate of 32.5 tons per acre.

However, the sugar content is at 19.6%, which, Greear said, he was told by Richard Wististn, senior analyst for Commodity Information Inc., is an industry-record for the U.S.

Greear said the good crop is a tribute to the growers’ patience and flexibility and the hard work of the growers and factory crews.

“Everything is processing well and last night I slept eight hours. I’m looking out at the frozen snow and I have a smile on my face,” Greear said.

He said slicing will continue through most of January but with the high sugar content processing could go into February.