Oregon sugarbeet growers are feeling the sting of the ongoing drought afflicting the West.
According to the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor of Feb. 17 released by the National Drought Mitigation Center, much of California, Nevada and Oregon are experiencing exceptional or extreme drought conditions. Oregon is faring slightly better now than its neighbors as Figure 1 details, but growers are planning for another dry year.
Beet grower Doug Maag, owner of Y1 Farms Inc. near the unincorporated community of Jamieson in Malheur County, Ore., is realistic about the situation going into planting season.
“We’ve still got a little time,” he said. “We usually plant our beets about the last week of March. We’ll take a good look at the whole situation then as far as the chances of having water into the later part of the year. If we had a week or two of wet weather, things can change pretty fast. But you take a good look at it now, and you’re not very excited.”
Jamieson is located 17 miles northwest of Vale. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 1,874, down from 1,976 in 2000.Vale is a city in Malheur County, about 12 miles west of the Idaho border. It’s at the intersection of U.S. Routes 20 and 26, on the Malheur River at its confluence with Bully Creek.
Water shortage
Doug, 63, farms about 1,700 acres with his son Corey, 39.
“Jamieson has got a post office, and we’re pretty lucky to have that,” Doug said. “We live on Maag Road. That’s good until the bill collectors come and get you. There are several Maags around here.”
Usually Doug grows about 200 to 250 acres of beets. He’s a member of the Snake River Sugar Company, formed in 1994. The Snake River cooperative supplies beets to The Amalgamated Sugar Company in Boise, Idaho. The co-op bought Amalgamated in 1997.
Doug is a longtime member of the Snake River executive board representing the Nyssa, Ore., area.
“Last year we could only raise about a third of those acres because of the water shortage,” he said. “We’re going to try and grow about that same number this year. But it may get curtailed with the lack of water. We do have access to some wells, but not every field is set up to get water from wells.”
Beet tonnage averaged between 42 and 45 tons last season.
“The sugar content is what we have to work on a little bit,” Doug said. “We probably average in the mid-16s. We’ve always had pretty good luck getting tons. But we haven’t been able to achieve that 17 percent like we have wanted.
“I’ve hit 17 on some fields with certain varieties but not on an average. We had some fields go 17 and 17.5. But then we have other varieties that do 16. We had one this year that only did 15. But I think my average was like 16.3 or 16.5. We’re kind of tuning in on that. As a company we’re demanding more out of our seed people to work with us to help us achieve that.”
After harvest the beets make a short trip to the piling station in Jamieson, no longer than three miles away. From there they are sent 70 miles by semi to the factory in Nampa, Idaho.
“Corey does all the work and I do all the talking,” Doug said with a laugh. “Corey handles a lot of the day-to-day operations.”
In addition to beets, Y1 Farms also grows onions, corn, wheat and hay. The Maags raise about 250 acres of onions and ship more than 1,000 to 1,200 semi loads of onions from its packaging facility in Vale. They also have a feedlot for 6,000 to 7,000 head of natural beef.
Y1 Farms?
"When I started farming there were some advantages to being in a corporation,” Doug said. “I needed to come up with a name for the corporation. My attorney said to preferably not do Maag Farms or Maag Feedlots. There were already some Maags who had Maag this or Maag that.
“And I really couldn’t even think of anything. My dad’s brand was a Y and a 1. And for the lack of an imagination I just used that and put farms behind it and that’s where we’re at.”
His dad Warner, who died last year at 93, played a part in the Maags starting an operation in Oregon.
Warner was born in 1921 in Buhl, Idaho, to Swiss immigrants Anna Marie Ernst and Emil Maag Sr. In 1938, Warner and his two brothers Emil and Benny were attracted to the Vale Oregon Irrigation Project as it neared completion. Their father purchased 160 acres and leased it to them.
“They moved up here from Buhl, Idaho, in the late 1930s,” Doug said. “They raised beets in Idaho, and they continued to raise beets here.
“If not for my dad, we wouldn’t be in the beet industry.”
Droughts come and go
“We’ve had droughts off and on for the last 20 years,” Doug said. “This current drought started last year. We ran out of water about the first of August last year in our reservoir system.”
Doug left about 30 percent of his ground idle last year.
“You need water really for sugarbeets into September,” he said. “Unless you have an alternative source it makes it kind of tough to carry sugarbeets all the way until the end. In some of the preceding years, we’ve tried to stop irrigating them in July and August. It’s just a wreck. They get so rubbery, and they don’t keep. You don’t get any tonnage. It’s just bad for the company and bad for everybody.”
For the upcoming season, the water situation for each field will be evaluated by its location.
“If they are located by a well that we can supplement with, we’ll probably grow the sugarbeets,” Doug said. “But if they’re located where it looks like we’re going to run out of water in July or August, we won’t be able to put sugarbeets there.”
The drought is affecting multiple states.
“We’re in a mega-drought in this area,” Doug said. “Our reservoirs are really low. One is in the 15 percent range. The other one is probably in 25-to-30 percent range and their snowpack is weak.”
The Warm Springs and Beulah reservoirs noted above serve the Vale Oregon Irrigation District and supply most of the water for Y1 Farms. A portion is also served by the Malheur Reservoir in the Orchard Water District.
“Last year we got very little water out of Malheur, because it was low and it’s even lower this year,” Doug said. “Things look pretty dim unless we get some significant rainfall in the next 30 to 40 days.”
Some wells are available for land in the Orchard district.
“We’ve got enough for part of the farm with those wells,” Doug said.
Y1 Farms uses a gravity-fed irrigation system.
“Most of it is gravity,” Doug said but pivots, hand-line systems and sprinklers are also used.
“If we don’t get any more water than there is right now there are some growers who probably won’t raise beets. And that’s the way it was last year. Not everybody raised beets last year. If they didn’t have access to a well, they didn’t raise them. They put their shares up to get them placed elsewhere. And that’s the same thing that will happen this year.”
Starting a family
Doug and Terrie xxxxx were wed in 1974.
“I can remember the first year we got married,” Doug said. “My wife was going to go out and help weed the beets to save a little money. But she got into a beet field that had some nightshade in it, and she hasn’t been very happy with nightshade ever since. She kind of quit me on the weeding.”
Now Terrie handles the payroll.
“She becomes pretty important every two weeks when the checks go out,” Doug said.
They have two adult children. Corey is married to Mandi, who assists with bookkeeping for the cattle operation. Isabella and Brooklyn are granddaughters.
“We’ve got plenty for everybody to do here,” Doug said.
Their daughter Kimi is a principal at Fruitland Middle School in Fruitland, Idaho. She is married to Mike Fitch with two children of their own.
Doug also purchased his first beet contract in 1974.
“I got acquainted with beets quite a bit earlier than that when I was just a kid,” he said. “We got to go thin the beets when they used to thin beets. And we started with a short-handled hoe. I can remember that. I had two brothers and three sisters. We would get a lot of rows, but we wouldn’t get many acres.”
Healthy outlook
“We won’t get a drought forever,” Doug said. “It goes in cycles. It’ll rotate in a wetter cycle. But we haven’t given up totally yet. The last rainy spell we had here all the rivers started to run and got a little water in the reservoir. If we get another stretch like that, we could get up where we could maybe squeak by. It’s kind of optimistic, but in this business you have to be optimistic.”
Doug is equally optimistic about the sugar industry.
“We’re going to have some good years and we’re going to have some bad years. But all in all, when you grow sugarbeets you’re going to get a check. There’s a year or two where it might not be quite as good as you think it should be. But a couple years ago it was a little extra. And this year it’s not bad.”