Area sugar beet growers are pretty much all smiles as the 2021 harvest is all but over in the Western Sugar Cooperative’s Lovell Factory District.
As of Monday, only 490 acres of beets …
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Area sugar beet growers are pretty much all smiles as the 2021 harvest is all but over in the Western Sugar Cooperative’s Lovell Factory District.
As of Monday, only 490 acres of beets remained to be delivered in the Lovell district, with roughly 270 acres still to be harvested in the Billings, Montana, Factory District.
The first cause for celebration was absolutely ideal harvest weather.
“If you believe in a harvest weather God, he did real well,” said Tod Stutzman, North End grower and a member of the cooperative’s board of beet growers. “We couldn’t have asked for better weather.”
A year ago, growers dealt with difficult conditions and harvested frozen beets before shutting down in the second week of November.
This harvest season, “weather maybe held us up for four days, with no loss to frost,” Stutzman noted. Some rain and snow muddied fields briefly, but he called it nothing more than a brush with bad weather, “a reality check.”
Stutzman said final figures are not available, but the average tonnage of the harvested crop should come in right at the projected yield of 26 tons to the acre.
Early results from the processing of the 2021 beets are favorable at the Lovell factory, he added.
“Sugar content has been great,” he said. “We should average 18.4% sugar.”