The annual sugarbeet institute in North Dakota is a place where dreams come true, said Dr. Mohamed Khan, extension sugarbeet specialist and professor at North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota.
“A sugarbeet grower can have dreams and here it can become reality,” he said. “Here the grower can talk to people who can help make it happen. There are bankers, seed and equipment salesmen who are ready to talk to them and help provide specific seed treatments, or make specific modifications to machinery and equipment. No matter how much technology grows, people still need personal contact and human interaction.”
The 53rd annual International Sugarbeet Institute took place March 25-26 at the Fargodome in Fargo. Around 2,000 people passed through the institute each day and Khan said there were about 118 exhibits this year.
This year’s event was the 17th sugarbeet institute for Khan, who was born and raised on a sugarcane plantation owned by Bookers in Guyana. Khan’s father was an employee of Bookers and the senior manager in charge of equipment maintenance. After graduating from high school at age 16, he taught for three years and then received a Bachelor of Science in agriculture from the University of Guyana.
Khan worked at the University of Guyana and later at the National Edible Oil Company, where he was responsible for demonstrating or improving production of various crops including soybeans, corn, peanuts and coconuts. He got his master’s degree from the University of Bath in England (done in collaboration with the University of Bristol), and then oversaw two oil palm plantations in remote areas of Guyana.
After getting his doctorate at Clemson University, Khan came to North Dakota in 1999. He’s the chairman of the institute and has seen many changes at the event since then.
“There is more technology now. When I first came here, 8-row harvesters were the big thing, and now its 12-row harvesters. There are wider sprayers and GPS-managed tractors,” he said.
“Seeds have also changed. There are better stands now and of course, Roundup Ready technology. The biggest change this year is lots of beet carts. More growers are buying beet carts to get beets out of the field and not get stuck. We have six or seven of these exhibitors. Overall, sugarbeet growers have become much more efficient, and today, are producing more sugarbeet on less acreage than they were 10 years ago.”
Casey Bryl, export sales manager for Amity Technology, talked with growers at the company’s equipment exhibit. Bryl has been with Amity for the past eight years and has been overseas 51 times.
“Amity exports sugarbeet harvesting equipment to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Slovakia, China, Egypt and Kyrgyzstan,” Bryl said. “I spend about 85 percent of my time on our export markets, and the rest is domestic in the Northern Red River Valley and Michigan markets. We provide foreign customers with equipment and solutions for agronomics, crop production and overall in-field efficiency.
“My favorite part of my job is getting to experience the agriculture industry on a global level and helping farmers better their crop production and efficiency through the equipment we sell,” said Bryl, who grew up on a farm near Hillsboro, N.D.
“I am usually overseas the last week of September and the first week of October. What other job could I have where I am standing in a field overseas watching Amity sugarbeet harvesting, air seeding and Wil-Rich, Wishek tillage equipment, and then three flights and 24 hours later be back home in the Red River Valley or Michigan standing in an Amity customers sugar beet field?”
In Russia, Kazakhstan and the Ukraine, Amity sells equipment to large agriholding corporate farms, according to Bryl.
“They range from 250,000 acres to 2.5 million acres,” he said. “Some are owned by private individuals and some are owned by families. The really big ones are owned by an equity fund in New York or Switzerland, and some are publicly traded. Our best customer in the Ukraine started farming in the 1990s and then took the company public on the Warsaw exchange.”
Bryl said that producers in Amity export markets and the other countries he visits keep a close eye on what’s going on the Red River Valley.
“They follow it avidly,” he said. “In our export markets, the large agriholding companies want to learn about production here. They are very interested in fertility practices, precision agriculture, piling and storage techniques. They ask a lot of questions about the logistics of the harvest and the sugarbeet pre-pile, and they want to know how farmers here can farm the acres they do so efficiently and with so few people.”
There are no sugarbeet cooperatives in any of the countries Amity exports to, according to Bryl.
“In Russia and the Ukraine, the sugar companies are the agriholdings. They have sugar divisions and have their own sugarbeet factories and farming operations,” he said. “They put beets from their farms through their factories and contract with smaller farmers to fill their factory capacity. With no contractual obligation to planting acres year after year, this is one reason why depending on the value of the contracts, there can be big fluctuations in the acres. Amity sugarbeet harvesting equipment sales sometimes follow these fluctuations.”
Bernie Kringstad, president and founder of Kringstad Ironworks Inc. in Park River, N.D., exhibits every year at the institute. This year, he displayed his company’s Crop Shuttle 4600, a 46-ton crop cart that can be used for sugarbeets and converted to harvest onions, carrots, pickles, potatoes, sugar cane and corn silage.
“We started in Hoople, N.D., in 1987,” Kringstad said, who runs the family business with his sons Jacob, 25, and Alek, 23. He and his wife Leigh also have a son who is in college and a 13-year-old daughter. In addition to beet carts, Kringstad’s company manufactures pilers for the American Crystal Sugar Company and other sugar cooperatives, and ships pilers to southern Russia.
“We also do structural work for ethanol, coal and canola plants,” said Kringstad, who is currently investigating new export markets and sending crop shuttles to other countries.
It took Kringstad and his staff one day to transport the beet shuttle to Fargo on a semi-truck and one day to set it up in the Fargodome.
“This beet shuttle takes two weeks to build and can be modified for several crops,” Kringstad said. “The hopper has a front discharge onto the boom and it handles crops more gently than other multi-conveyor carts. It is much more economical because it can be used for many different crops. We stay innovative by incorporating the potato industry into the beet industry and creating multi-purpose equipment.”