Source: The Times-News
Rain and snow in southern Idaho in early October slowed sugarbeet harvest just as farmers were starting full harvest, but storms aren’t expected to hurt yields.
F.T. Freestone, who farms south of Hansen, was just getting ready to dig beets on October 10, but rain kept him out of the fields until warmer and drier weather returned. He doesn’t expect the wet weather to have any long-term impact.
Amalgamated Sugar Co. began regular harvest on Oct. 6. Harvest is limited in September until the weather cools enough to begin piling beets.
Freestone expects to harvest one of his largest beet crops ever. That’s a sentiment echoed by other growers.
Pat Laubacher, vice president for agriculture at Amalgamated, said some growers have been pleasantly surprised to see the size of beets once they opened up fields.
Many growers in the Magic Valley suffered hail damage during April and May that set some fields back and required others to be replanted. Replants can suffer yield hits but favorable weather during much of the growing season helped those fields catch up. Even though conditions were hot and dry from July through September, growers had ample irrigation water supplies to meet crop water demand.
Amalgamated estimates this year’s crop at around 40 tons per acre, up from 39.18 tons per acre in 2017 but behind the record 41.42 tons per acre set in 2016. Two years ago, the first killing frost did not occur until late October so the beets continued to grow until they were harvested. Killing frosts across much of southern Idaho in mid-October stopped growth and will trim potential yields a bit.
While high tonnage earns bragging rights, growers are also paid on sugar content and it looks like the 2018 crop is on a record-setting pace for sugar.
As of October 8, the cumulative sugar content was 18.1 percent, putting Amalgamated Sugar Co. on pace to set a new company record. The previous record was 18.04 percent sugar in 2016.
“We are very happy,” Laubacher said. “We have never been this high this early in the season. It’s higher than we anticipated.
Laubacher attributes the high sugar content to the nearly ideal growing conditions and that growers are also more aggressively managing nutrients throughout the growing season. Amalgamated Sugar is in the second year of a program that rewards growers with low nitrate levels in their beets.
Growers are learning to like seeing a yellow cast across their beet fields in September and October as the plants run out of available nitrogen. Amalgamated has been able to statistically show that high nitrate beets produce lower thick juice and also do not store as well through the winter. The company wants to see residual soil nitrogen as close to zero as possible at harvest.
More growers are planting higher sugar varieties that have been approved by Amalgamated within the last two years. Seed supplies are still limited and growers are still learning how to manage these varieties, but Laubacher expects to see higher sugar content in the future as these varieties are planted on more acres.