Rick Gerstenberger wears many hats in the sugarbeet industry.
In addition to being a grower, landowner and beet seed sales agent, he’s also board chairman of the Michigan Sugar Company and serves on the board of directors of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association.
Now the third-generation grower is also the 2015 Sugar Producer Grower of the Year.
“I’m extremely honored,” Rick said. “There are a tremendous amount of excellent growers out there. It’s humbling. I know there are other guys doing as much or more for the industry, and they are great growers. I believe in this industry, and I will work hard to see it succeed.”
Family first
Rick, 56, is most proud of being a husband and father.
“On the farm, it goes back to the family,” he said. “My sons, my dad and my wife stepped up to allow me to do this. My wife, Linda, is the one who keeps me lined up and going the right way.”
Gerstenberger Farms Inc., based in Sandusky, Mich., is a family farm corporation operated by Rick and Linda, his parents, Dwain and Shirley, and brother, Rob, and his wife, Cherie. They grow a rotation of beets, corn, soybeans, wheat and dry beans on 3,000 acres of land. About 850 acres are dedicated to beets.
“My dad is 82 and goes everyday to do something,” Rick said. “He’s happiest if he can be on a tractor. But as he has aged, he has given up some of the tougher jobs. I tell my boys ‘You’ll probably have to put up with that from me someday. They laugh and tell me I’d be worse.’”
Rick and Linda have four grown children. The eldest is Jennifer, who lives in Orlando and works for Walt Disney World. Jillian is a pediatric audiologist at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Fla. Dan and his wife, Amanda, have three children, Clayton, Liam and Kendall. Youngest son, Mike, is married to Kayla. Mike and Dan both work on the farm.
“Oh, it’s wonderful,” Rick said. “I have wonderful grandchildren and children and daughters-in-law and everything is super.”
Rick got his first taste of growing beets himself as a teenager.
“My brother, Rob, and I rented a farm on shares with a neighbor in 1974,” Rick said. “My dad and mother were growing beets then. We planted sugarbeets there and that was the year that sugar was not in the farm bill, and the price went way up. As young guys we made lots of money, and maybe that’s what hooked us into farming.”
Surprising season
Despite getting beets planted later than normal, growers in Michigan harvested an excellent crop. Excess moisture is a big reason why.
“We had rainfall all year,” Rick said. “Our sprayer tracks in the beet fields were seldom dry. I think as a co-op we’ll set a record yield number. A lot of growers in all of the areas will do the same. This year the difference was the rainfall. Normally at wheat harvest time in July and August we get dry. But we continued to get 2-3-4 inches of rain in that time frame which we normally don’t get. And the beets just kept growing.”
Harvest wrapped up for Rick in early November. Estimated beet yield per acre is higher than the year before at 30 tons, while sugar content fell slightly to 17.5 percent.
“Sugar content is a little bit lower because of the later planting,” Rick said. “But the quality of the beets is pretty good. Overall as a co-op, the quality is pretty good.”
Rick uses the Ropa Tiger self-propelled harvester.
“We load our trucks on the road with a Ropa Maus,” he said. It’s the third year the Gerstenbergers have worked with their neighbors at Stoutenburg Farms.
“It’s worked out very well,” Rick said. “Working together has made it very easy for all of us.”
Sugarbeets harvested by the European-built units are carted and piled on field edges. There, Ropa Maus cleaner-loaders were used to clean the beets and load them on to waiting semis for transport to the factories. The 25-mile trip to Croswell is the closest factory for Rick, but deliveries also go to Caro, 35 miles away, and Bay City, 71 miles away.
“In early delivery, we deliver to every factory but Sebewaing,” Rick said.
This season’s potentially record-setting beet crop for Michigan Sugar may prevent growers from harvesting all of their beets. Paul Pfenninger, vice president of agriculture for the Bay County-based grower-owned cooperative, predicts this year’s beet crop to exceed 4.8 million tons.
The more beets Michigan Sugar receives, the later into spring it takes to process them all. The beets are stored in piles, but they can only be stored for so long.
“We’re going to have to decide how much risk we want to take as a co-op,” Rick said. “We’ll be very close to either leaving a few or deciding to take them all.”
As harvest was under way Michigan Sugar Company made the decision to have its growers harvest 100 percent of their beet acreage.
If growers had been told not to harvest up to 8,000 acres in a voluntary set-aside program, they still would have been compensated.
“We pulled the old program used only once before in 2008 off the shelf,” Rick said. “We made a couple changes to it. It’s just being proactive. I know a lot of people across the industry are saying well Michigan is going to leave beets. But the day we decide to leave them is a poor day to figure out how you’re going to do it. So at the last board meeting everybody agreed that if we needed to do this, we need to plan for it right now. I think when we’re done with this harvest season—whether we implement the set-aside plan or not—we will go back and revisit it, iron out some of the things that showed up as problems with the program and have it ready to use for the next time.”
Serving growers
“This industry is what drives a lot of the growers,” Rick said. “I can grow corn and soybeans, and it’s not nearly as exciting as the sugarbeet industry is to me. I’ve worked at it for a long time, and I really am grateful to the industry. Yet there’s always a challenge in this industry. For as long as I’ve been growing beets and going to meetings, there have been challenges—things like Roundup Ready seed or getting a farm bill.
“At one of the first growers meetings I attended in Croswell, Luther Markwart’s father, Robert, was the East District president, and I was a kid in high school. I got to sneak away with my dad to go to the meeting. I was interested then and am still very interested in the industry and the well-being of the industry.”
Rick began service on the Michigan Sugar co-op board in 2007. His first term as chairman began in 2008.
“I was asked if I would run for the chairman’s job and I said yes I would and have done so since,” Rick said. “I’ve never worked with such a talented group of management, officers and board members. You never leave a meeting not engaged in the meeting. That is what has made us successful.
“As a co-op, I’ll put us up against anybody,” he said. “We’ve come a long ways in a short time from 2000 till now. We went from being a solely-owned business to a co-op. A lot of people had to learn to do things differently. Growers and management had to realize that being a cooperative was different.
“My duty as chairman is to help lead and facilitate the group,” he said. “Teamwork is key. That whole group needs to work together and eventually be on the same page for every issue that comes before them. It’s my job to try and make sure that everybody understands what the issues are and that we all are in sync. It’s everybody working together and I don’t care whether you are the janitor or the CEO. If you have an idea everybody needs to hear it. It may work. It may not.”
According to Rick, all co-op board members share the same outlook as to their duties.
“I firmly believe that you try to leave the place in better shape than you found it for the next generation,” he said. “If every grower does that, this industry will be strong for a long, long time. That’s the type of growers I see at the ASGA and across the country.”
Looking ahead
Voters in Colorado rejected a measure to require labeling of foods made with genetically modified ingredients on Election Day, and a similar Oregon initiative was voted down by a narrow margin.
Several other states are eyeing GMO labeling measures. It’s an issue that must continually be addressed.
Connecticut and Maine have passed GMO labeling laws, but both states require other states to pass labeling bills before the laws take effect. Vermont has passed a mandatory labeling law with no other requirements. It is set to take effect in 2016, but labeling opponents have sued to try to block the law.
“I believe a lot of it has to do with education and misinformation,” Rick said. “As growers we have to step up and be able to tell our story and talk to people about what we do and how we do it, because it isn’t the Frankenfood that some people would have it be portrayed. A lot of them don’t have a clue what we do. We need to be better at telling our story.”
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced Oct. 27 that it had reached draft agreements with Mexican sugar exporters and the Mexican government to suspend antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on imports of sugar from that country. Commerce requested comments from interested parties by Nov. 10, with Nov. 26 indicated as the earliest date on which the final agreements could be signed.
The agreement is good for U.S. growers.
“We need to have trade with Mexico, but it needs to be managed so it doesn’t chase the sugarbeet industry out of business in some places by lowering the price so much that we cannot compete,” Rick said. “We need to be grateful there is some structure to the market now, and the sugar industry should be stronger in the long run because of it."