Warmer weather led to higher sugar content levels for some Nebraska beet growers last season.
Third-generation grower Jim Darnell, 65, credits Mother Nature for the assist. He and his wife, Calleen, own JD Farms located about 6 miles north of Scottsbluff.
“We averaged 30 tons per acre for our beets and about 17.5 percent sugar,” Jim said. “We’ve had some higher tonnages, but that’s the highest sugar we’ve ever had. We didn’t do anything different to account for it.”
Ideal growing conditions instead made the difference by extending the growing season and drawing out harvesting his 700 acres of beets.
“Normally we get a hard freeze sometime in the first part of October, and it’ll stop the sugar from increasing,” Jim said.
“We were harvesting almost every day, but were just limited,” he added. “It got so warm. The least amount we ever harvested was three hours one day. We started and by 7 in the morning we were shut off. It was too warm already. It made harvest last longer. Instead of running late at night we’d get up and start harvesting beets at about 3 in the morning.”
JD Farms has five full-time employees and two-to-three part-time employees. Extra truck drivers are hired for harvest.
“We have a lot of people who come out and help us during harvest,” Jim said. “I’ve been real fortunate. Most of them have been with me for several years now as part-time drivers to make extra money for Christmas.”
Distance to the Western Sugar Cooperative Factory in Scottsbluff ranges from 2-to-12 miles, Jim said. Some beets are also transported to the nearby Western Sugar factory in Torrington, Wyo.
Pile losses
Extreme weather fluctuations, featuring temperatures that ranged from below 0 to well above freezing, led to some beet spoilage in the piles for the Western Sugar Cooperative. Jim is a member of the Nebraska Sugarbeet Growers Association.
“That’s just what we don’t want,” Jim said of the hot and cold extremes. “We were fortunate though during February. It turned cold and stayed cold clear to the end of February. That’s what cut down on the severity of the losses.
“It didn’t turn out as bad as they were originally estimated, but we’re still waiting for the final numbers to come in. They went in with excavators and dug the hot spots out and that helped stop the spread of the bad beets.
“We haven’t had piles go bad like that for 20-some years,” he said. “And even then, it wasn’t this bad.
“Our aerated piles did real well. We had a few of them that have the tubes in them for aeration. They stored well.”
According to the Sugarbeet Research & Education Board of Minnesota and North Dakota, it’s estimated that respiration causes about 70 percent of sugar loss during storage, and decay accounts for 10 percent. The remaining 20 percent of sucrose losses are the result of fermentation when oxygen content is low because of poor ventilation, freezing and thawing cycles and root desiccation.
Harvest practices that contribute to pile storage quality include using clean equipment, minimizing weed debris and rocks in the pile, preparing slabs properly and maintaining harvest equipment—from defoliators and lifters to trucks and conveyors.
New season
Now another growing season is under way.
JD Farms finished planting around mid-April.
“We used to always try to have our beets planted by the 10th of April and then we began to have trouble and freezing off,” Jim said. “So we pushed planting back.”
If all goes well, early harvest will begin around Sept. 20 with normal harvest expected to follow about Oct. 6.
“My dad and my grandpa both raised sugarbeets,” Jim said. “They started about 20 miles to the west of here in the North Platte Valley.”
One family tradition will end with Jim.
“I’m Jim Darnell III,” he said. “My dad’s name is Jim Darnell Jr. We stopped at the end there. That was enough—too confusing. We kept the J part but no more Jims.”
Jim and Calleen will celebrate 47 years of marriage this summer.
Their oldest son, Jerry, is the area ag manager for Western Sugar covering Nebraska, Colorado and southeast Wyoming. Youngest son, Jon, is an optometrist.
“They both have a little ground they farm on their own,” Jim said. “Our third son lives in Windsor, Colo. Jeff works for a construction company, so he’s too far away to help us during harvest.”
Jim and Calleen have six grandchildren; three boys and three girls.
Easy decision
“I always liked to farm,” Jim said, “so it was pretty easy for me to decide to farm. And beets have just been a good crop for us—pretty stable. It fits in well with our rotation of beets, dry edible beans and corn.”
JD Farms grows about 1,200 acres of dry edible beans, 2,400 acres of corn and 300 acres of wheat.
Weed resistance has not been a problem.
“So far it hasn’t been a big deal,” Jim said. “They say it can explode rather fast. I think we’re very fortunate by having our rotation. We use different chemicals on our dry beans, and we use some other chemicals beside Roundup on our corn, too. So we’ll be a little better off than where you have corn-soybean rotation using glyphosate on everything. We can’t use glyphosate on our dry beans at all. We’re committed to other chemicals.”
Waters of the North Platte and Sweetwater rivers that flow into Pathfinder Reservoir provide irrigation for JD Farms. Quite a few of the area farms have deep well water too.
Drought has not been an issue for six years, Jim said.
“The snowpack is down some, but we have enough carryover for a full allocation this year,” he said. “It’s the next year that’s unknown.”
Most of the land is pivot-irrigated, while less than 10 percent is gravity-fed.
“Even during a drought you can get by pretty good if you have a pivot and irrigation water,” Jim said. “We generally have our best crops when we have a hot, dry year.”
Breeding tolerance to the virus that causes rhizomania has helped growers.
“We’ve been raising some tremendous crops of beets in this area the last four, five years,” Jim said. “When they invented Roundup Ready sugarbeets it made life not only easier but increased our yields quite a bit too.”
Strip tillage has also been a benefit.
“We strip-till all our crops, except the wheat of course,” Jim said. “One of our big problems here is wind erosion. Some of our ground is sandy. The strip till has definitely helped us have a better sugarbeet crop, because everything is either in corn stalks or cover crop. It cuts down labor and fuel use. It also helps a lot if we get a good hard rain, which we don’t get very often.
“Hail storms are something you worry about all the time,” Jim added, “and it’s not just the hail storms it’s the amount of wind you get with the hail storm. That really determines the amount of damage sometimes.”
Sugar outlook
“It’s going to be a continual fight between the sugar industry and manufacturers that use sugar and also the people who are trying to spread the belief that GMO sugar is bad for you,” Jim said. “Our number one problem in the sugar industry could be the public perception battle between GMO sugar vs. non-GMO sugar.”
As more companies look to go with non-GMO ingredients, the sugar industry must make its voice heard.
Hershey Company officials confirmed on Feb. 18 that as part of its commitment to simpler ingredients, its two iconic products, Hershey’s Milk Chocolate and Kisses, will be non-GMO by the end of the year.
Organizations like GMO Inside and Green America are successfully getting more people and companies to buy into their arguments against using GMO ingredients.
“Whether it’s right or wrong doesn’t matter,” Jim said. “We’ve got to keep up with them. People read that and see it on labels and think ‘Well, non-GMO must be better.’
“But actually there is no difference for sugarbeets,” Jim said. “If you test non-GMO sugar against sugar from Roundup Ready, there is no difference between the two.”