GREELEY, Colo—Sugarbeets have been part of the agricultural scene in northern Colorado for more than 100 years—said to have bought and paid for more farms in the region than any other crop.
Despite seeing a statewide decrease in significance over the years, Weld County continues to be a solid producer of sugarbeets, leading Colorado in total production by a long shot.
In 2012, there were 10,300 acres of sugarbeets harvested in Weld County, producing 325,000 tons. Yuma County was second last year with 4,800 acres producing about 171,000 tons, followed by Logan County with 3,800 acres harvested and 118,000 tons produced, and then Larimer County with 2,800 acres and 80,100 tons, according to the Colorado office of National Agriculture Statistics Service.
Statewide, total production numbers were up about 14 percent in 2012 from the previous year—thanks to all-time high yields in Colorado.
In 2011, there were 29,400 acres harvested that produced 829,000 tons, but in 2012, there were 29,700 acres harvested and—at 31.8 tons per acre—that produced about 944,000 tons.
The 2009 sugarbeet total production numbers—about 35,000 acres harvested and 963,000 tons produced—represented the best in the state in more than a decade.
Sugarbeets were introduced to northern Colorado in the early 1900s, and sugarbeet processing plants dotted the landscape from Longmont to Fort Collins, from Brighton to Eaton and east to Fort Morgan, Sterling and Ovid.
Now, however, only the Fort Morgan processing plant remains and it processes the majority of the region’s beets. The Greeley plant was razed to make room for Leprino Foods’ new cheese-processing plant.
Greeley and Eaton opened the first two sugar factories in Weld in 1902, and others followed in Windsor (1904), Fort Lupton (1920) and Johnstown (1926).
At one time, there were 13 factories operating in northern Colorado.
According to the NASS, the record-high acreage for sugarbeets was 242,000 in 1930 and the record low was 2,500 in 1985. That low came during a time when the former Great Western Sugar Co. was in bankruptcy. It was purchased out of bankruptcy by Tate & Lyle—a British company that renamed it the Western Sugar Co.
In the late 1990s, Tate & Lyle began looking for a buyer because of the volatile sugar market in the U.S. and in the April 2002, the sale to the Western Sugar Cooperative—a group of more than 1,000 sugarbeet growers in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana—was finalized. The cooperative, which is based in Denver, contracts beets to growers in the four states.
Source: www.greeleytribune.com