It rises each fall in the midst of northern Colorado’s farmlands, a mini-mountain that from a distance looks like a pile of dirt.
About 30,000 pounds of sugarbeets tumble out of each truck that backs up to a conveyor belt, and the tan-skinned vegetables that look like giant turnips are ferried to the top of the pile, smelling of damp earth. When the harvest is done, this heap will contain 60,000 to 70,000 tons of sugarbeets.
From this brown mound, built by farmers who climbed into mud-caked pickup trucks at 4 a.m., comes glittering white sugar.
Sugar extracted from the beets shows no trace of genetic modification even though farmers began using genetically modified beet seeds eight years ago. It’s the same sugar as from sugarcane — and beet growers are fighting for their livelihood as they take that message to the public and federal regulators, who are considering whether to require GMO (genetically modified organism) labels on sugar that comes from genetically modified plants. Federal legislation passed in July will require most food packages to carry a symbol or an electronic code readable by smartphone that shows whether the food contains genetically modified organisms. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has two years to work out the details, including whether beet sugar will need a GMO label.
Source: www.denverpost.com