HUNTLEY, Mont.—It was barely noon and already 94 farm trucks had unloaded sugarbeets at the Huntley pile—1,700 tons—and another 10 trucks were waiting to feed the conveyor.
There would be no lunch break, just load after load of sugarbeets from field to truck scale. The farm dirt from the field trucks’ treads rubbed beige stripes into Old Highway 312.
In Billings, the sugar factory smoke stacks had just a slight curl of white steam as Western Sugar Cooperative fired up for one of its earliest starts in recent years. Tuesday’s harvest was nearly two weeks ahead of the 2013 start.
Farmers are sitting on one of their biggest sugarbeet crops ever, as many as 37 tons of beets per acre, hence the head start. Nobody has reached into the pile yet to see if their expectations were being realized.
“It’s really hard to tell, since it’s our first day, but our pre-harvest samples showed some excellent growth,” said Randall Jobman, Western’s senior agriculturalist in Billings. “We have a mature crop that got started early, and usually that’s favorable.”
Statewide, sugarbeet farmers rate 86 percent of the state crop in good to excellent condition, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. The quality is 20 percent better than the five-year average, according to NASS estimates released Tuesday.
In Sidney, farmers growing beets under contract with Sidney Sugars expected to average 29 tons per acre. Sidney sugar beet fields typically produce fewer tons of beets than the fields serving Western Sugar Cooperative, but the sugar content of the crop is usually higher. Sidney farmer Don Steinbeisser Jr. said he expected the trend to continue this year. A 29-ton sugar beet crop for Sidney farmers is exceptional.
There has been a glut of sugar globally, and on the U.S. market, which has driven down sugar profits for farmers and processors for the second year in a row, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.
Trade agreements between the U.S. and Mexico have complicated the price slump, because Mexico has unfettered access to U.S. sugar buyers. But Mexican sugar might not be flowing easily across the border for much longer.
The U.S. Commerce Department last week concluded that Mexican government subsidies were encouraging farmers in that country to overproduce sugar. Consequently, the U.S. government is preparing to impose import duties on Mexican sugar. The duties could slow the flow of Mexican sugar into the U.S. and boost the value of American sugar.
It won’t be known before October whether the U.S. will actually penalize Mexican producers for dumping sugar.
Source: www.billingsgazette.com