Wyo sugar beets yield sweet success

POWELL -- The 2008 sugar beet crop in northern Wyoming brought record yields and payments to farmers.

Glen Reed, a Cody-area beet grower and a member of the local sugar beet grower association's board of directors, said the average projected grower payment for the 2008 crop is $1,278 per acre. That averages $52.08 per ton.

Sugar beet producers will receive an extra payment that figures to be about $6 a ton more.

"That's a substantial extra payment, six bucks a ton," Reed said.

With sugar content generally in the 17-percent range in the Lovell factory area of the Western Sugar Cooperative, "it's going to mean more than $6 a ton," he said.

The Lovell factory averaged 24.54 tons per acre with adjusted sugar content of 17.31 percent.

Reed attributed much of last year's success to Roundup Ready beets, grown commercially in widespread areas for the first time in 2008.

Roundup Ready sugar beets have been genetically modified to tolerate glyphosate, the ingredient in the Monsanto-produced herbicide Roundup.

Planting Roundup Ready beet seed saves growers on labor, fuel costs and equipment wear.

Spraying Roundup on the beets a couple times a season means spending only one-fourth to one-third the time it took to apply several weed-killing chemicals several times to conventional beets, Reed said.

Previously, spraying herbicide on beets "was one guy's job for almost a month," he said.

Reed said he was able to stop cultivating because of the new seed.

Reed said he thinks the future is bright for the sugar beet industry.

"It's a great time to get in. Shares are cheap and prices are good," he said.
source:trib.com