Source: My ND Now
The Yellowstone River Valley is home to about 110 growers who are part of Sidney Sugars. Here's how the company turns 32,000 acres of beets into a million tons of sugar.
They call this sugar valley.
And Sidney Sugars agriculturist Kathryn Cayko considers the sugarbeet growers who work here her family.
"All the growers are very special to me," says Cayko. "We try and work together all year--especially during harvest."
Right now, harvest is a bit messy because of some rain and snow. It means farmers have to employ an extra tractor to pull the semi through the field as it's filled up with muddy sugarbeets.
But grower Tim Karst isn't complaining. He's in the middle of lifting a great crop.
"[The moisture is] kind of normal, it seems like," says Karst. "Never fails during beet season. The yield's really been good so far. Real happy with it."
After the beets are plucked from the turf, they come to the Sugar Valley dumping station, a stopping-off point on their way to the Sidney Sugars plant in Sidney, Mont.
Trucks have been arriving for a few weeks now--dumping their loads of beets into the mini-river that washes them into the processing plant--where their journey from field to table takes a big step forward, starting with getting sliced into thin pieces.
"We use hot water at this point to diffuse the sugar out," says Sidney Sugars' Lincoln Reisig.
The process continues to extract the sugar from the plants--and to crystalize it--until it ends up where it's loaded, sometimes into 50- or 100-pound bags, but more frequently into 1-ton bags--what they call super sacks.
"It's a lot easier to handle a 2,000-pound bag than it is a bunch of 50s," says Reisig. "You get 50-pounders, 100-pounders, people lift them by hand. These super sacks always go by forklift; it makes moving it easier and cleaner."
These sacks are headed for Compact Industries, a Kraft company. There are also bags for a company that makes pancake mix and other products. Safe to say, the sugar produced here goes far and wide.
"This year we're expecting to harvest over one million tons," says Sidney Sugars general manager David Garland.
In the corporate offices, the general manager and agricultural manager are excited about a very good year that's shaping up.
"We're forecasting 32.5 tons to the acre," says Duane Peters, Sidney Sugars agricultural manager. "That's slightly above average. We're very happy with that number."
And they're happy to have another sugarbeet harvest well underway. The Sidney Sugars harvest is about 70 percent complete and should wrap up in about 10 days.