New pact lets Western Sugar growers deliver beets to Wyoming SugarWestern Sugar Cooperative sugar beet growers on Tuesday began delivering beets to Wyoming Sugar receiving stations after officials from the two companies reached an agreement allowing the Worland company to buy beets from Lovell factory district growers.“We've made an agreement with Western Sugar Cooperative to assist them in getting some of their growers' beets out,” said Cal Jones, chief executive officer of Wyoming Sugar. It's help Wyoming Sugar can give when “the whole state's economy is hurting,” he said. “We're just pleased to be able to help with Western Sugar, to be able to help them out.”

The agreement between the companies calls for up to 21,000 tons of beets to be taken to Wyoming Sugar receiving stations, Jones said.

“It depends on how they process and what we can do with them,” Jones said. “They're just not beets that can store long-term.”

One-third of those, or 7,000 tons, will be delivered to Worland. The remaining two-thirds, or 14,000 tons, are to go to the station at Emblem. Jones said the division is designed to aid the rehaul of beets to the Worland factory.

Western Sugar officials “put together the logistics of who's hauling where,” Jones said.

Jones said Wyoming Sugar would take what beets it could without risk to its growers or the beets it has already piled.

Glen Reed, president of the Big Horn Basin Beet Growers Association, was among 31 of 70 Western Sugar Cooperative growers who chose to sell beets to Wyoming Sugar.

“It's a good thing,” Reed said of the agreement. He started delivering beets to Wyoming Sugar Tuesday morning.

Reed said the agreement would allow Western Sugar growers who choose to participate to harvest more beets.

“It's a way to get more beets processed into sugar,” he said. “It's advantageous for the Western Sugar growers that decide to participate. It's advantageous for Wyoming Sugar.”

Wyoming Sugar officials can run their factory longer, Reed said, which helps spread fixed costs over a longer time.

Processing beets into sugar is preferable to leaving them frozen in the ground, Reed said. “Every ton across the scales, processed into sugar, is going to help.”

Delayed by the early October storm, Jones said Wyoming Sugar has harvested about 85 percent of its sugar beets although usually the harvest would be complete by now. Western Sugar beets will be co-mingled with Wyoming Sugar beets “to maximize production,” he said.

The Wyoming Sugar factory is running well, Jones said. Worland-area growers are “battling wet field conditions,” although beets there show less frost damage, possibly thanks to insulating snow.

“We did have some snow cover that may have helped,” Jones said. “It doesn't appear that we had the frost damage.”

“Soil conditions are very challenging right now,” Jones said. Tuesday “was the first day they were in the field without pushing and pulling trucks.”

Western Sugar growers have been harvesting under allotments. Growers can dig 1.2 tons of beets per acre in each seven-day period under contract with Western Sugar.