CROSWELL, Mich.—The summer’s strange weather is resulting in a sugarbeet crop that is OK on tonnage but low on sugar content.
Ray VanDriessche, director of community and government relations for Michigan Sugar Company in Bay City, said the estimate for the 2016 crop is about 30 tons per acre, but “sugar content is very low, the lowest we’ve seen it in a number of years.
“That has a huge impact when your sugar content is low,” he said.
He said the sugar content is about 15 percent or a little higher.
“We’d like to see that about 17½, 18 percent,” he said. “There are years where we have averaged 18½ percent sugar so we’re down.”
Michigan Sugar Company is a grower-owned cooperative consisting of about 1,100 farmers mostly in Michigan, but with some in Ontario. The cooperative has factories in Croswell, Bay City, Caro and Sebewaing.
Source: www.freep.com