Source: KTIC Radio
The sugarbeet harvest in the Nebraska Panhandle and eastern Wyoming will be about 99 percent done by Nov. 4, even with the early snow and freeze.
“After the hard freeze we had, two weeks ago, the beets have healed and we can store them up to 30 days. So we’re pretty comfortable,” said Jerry Darnell, Western Sugar vice president of ag for the South Region.
Beets should all be sliced by Dec. 1.
The early freeze not only caused a delay, which the factories have caught up with, but shut down the sugar in the beets.
“Right now, the sugars are going to be about 16.7 percent, which is 1 percent less than we were predicting,” said Darnell.
The factories in Scottsbluff, Neb., and Torrington, Wyo. are on schedule and Darnell said all the new processing equipment at the Scottsbluff factory is up and running, as expected.
“We’ve actually had production breaking numbers here [at the Scottsbluff factory] of about 18,000 hundredweight in 24 hours,” he said.