A workplace accident left the American Crystal Sugar Company board chairman and recipient of the 2016 Sugar Producer Grower of the Year award with more than broken bones and bruises.
Robert Green’s fall gave him a new appreciation for life.
His injuries occurred at Green’s farm near St. Thomas, N.D. Inclement weather put the wheels in motion.
“We got rained out the first day of beet harvest this year,” Green said. “We were supposed to start Oct. 1 at midnight, but it was raining.
“So we spent the next day biding our time, and I remembered to put some shrouding on the tractor lights that shine back on the lifter,” he said. “They shine into the beet truck pretty seriously when the truck is all the way in the back position. I put a little plastic with some duct tape on the side of the lamp to shroud the light.”
Green quickly accomplished the task.
“I was finished, and I was standing there looking at my work and decided it was good enough. I don’t know what happened next.
“But I was standing up on the tractor fender and on top of the tire, so I don’t remember slipping. I guess I had a concussion. I don’t remember a lot about that time.”
Green suffered more than a concussion.
“I broke one bone in my left arm,” he said. “I dislocated my shoulder, and I cracked my skull. I broke my skull right around the left orbit area, right around my left eye. Apparently my head hit the concrete pretty hard, because I had a real big ol’ shiner. My left eye was pretty close to being swollen shut when they took me in the ambulance.”
Green’s son, Nathan, was in the shop when he heard something that didn’t sound right.
“He stepped out to find me on the concrete,” Green said. “I may have hit the shop wall. The tractor was actually fairly close, out on the apron in front of the shop on the concrete. I may have hit the wall on my way down. Something certainly didn’t sound right, and my son came out and found me lying there unconscious.”
By the end of October, Green’s health was nearly back to normal.
“I’m up and at ‘em,” he said. “I’ve got a half cast on my arm which is a help so I can move my left arm. And I have my fingers sticking out the end of it. So I have some use of my left hand. It’s not completely useless. And the pain in my left shoulder is getting a little less every day.
“I have no idea how serious it could have been or how close I was to very serious,” Green said. “But I’m sure happy to be here.”
Green said being chosen as Grower of the Year is “an incredible honor” in part because he knows past recipients so well.
“Because of my position in the industry, I’ve known many of these guys. I think collectively it’s the nicest group of people that I’ve ever come across. So to be included with them is certainly an honor.”
It also provides Green a snapshot at this point in time.
“We growers are really never much more than a placeholder,” he said. “We’re just the person who happens to be there to get the job done at the time. I don’t think I’m any different than the generation before me or the one that will likely follow. So to be honored for something exceptional is certainly an incredible honor.”
New focus
“I’m happy,” Green said. “I’m a little more grateful, a little more humble too. I don’t know how I fell. It’s a mystery to me. I might have blacked out just for a second and that doesn’t happen to me that I know of. So that’s new and a little bit scary.”
Enough time has elapsed now that Green, 61, can joke about the fall, such as possibly making it mandatory to wear helmets on the farm.
“We’re rethinking that for some old guys right now,” he said.
Yet he has also gained perspective.
“Since I took a nasty bump on the head and had some people help me get my health back I’m a little more grateful,” Green said. “I think about all the people it takes to make this world go round and all the things that we do and just about my ability to just to be here and be a part of it. I’m a lucky guy. I’m very grateful and a little more humble too and still trying to figure out how does an old guy fall like that exactly?”
Beet heritage
Green’s grandfather, George Green, started growing beets in 1928. The first contract George signed with the American Beet Sugar Company is proudly kept in his office. American Beet changed its name to American Crystal Sugar Company in 1934.
“To the best of my knowledge, sugarbeets have been grown continuously on our farm since 1928,” Green said. “I don’t believe there have been any misses.”
The operation is called Green Farms Association.
“My father and my uncle incorporated their farming partnership in 1976 as a co-op back when North Dakota did not allow corporate farming,” Green said. “They did allow co-op farming. We’ve been an association since that time.”
Green’s father, Manvel, is retired and resides nearby in an assisted living facility. Manvel and Green’s uncle, Ralph Tucker, farmed together for many years before splitting up the co-op into two farm entities. Manvel’s remained a co-op, while Ralph formed a corporation.
Green made farming his business after graduating from the University of North Dakota with a biology degree in 1976.
“I just jumped right in,” Green said. “I have been at it in one level or another since coming back home.”
Green and his wife, Susan, celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary last June. Oldest son Nathan, 34, farms with them. He’s married to Melissa with three sons of their own. Youngest son Matthew, 29, lives in Chaska, Minn., and is a dentist in Victoria, Minn.
Green’s father-in-law, Allan Paul, lent a hand during harvest with Green laid up. Paul retired from farming in the mid-1990s.
Another harvest done
Green Farms Association hauls about two-thirds of its beet crop 12 miles to the factory in Drayton, N.D., and about one-third five miles to the St. Thomas piling station. Green grows about 800 acres of beets annually.
“I happened to be the guy who sat out under the rain showers,” Green said. “We actually got rained out three times in beet harvest this year, while everyone else kind of went from start to finish.
“So we struggled a little bit. We pulled a few trucks. But we also got our best beet crop out ever. We’re happy to take the time to get all those beets in. We averaged just over 29 ton and real close to 18 percent sugar. Sugar content has kind of been our bread and butter up here.”
American Crystal officials projected beet payments for the 2015 crop at a gross payment of $45 per ton. If realized, the gross price payment projection would be higher than the final payment of $44 per ton for 2014 beets.
“The weather gave us extremely dry conditions up and down the Red River Valley,” Green said. “We had a dry summer, especially in the middle to southern part of the Crystal growing region, and that’s why we had such good fortune. Our factories right now are slicing at a record pace and that’s largely due to two things, the very low tare and the very low sugar loss to molasses.
“Somebody told me once that processing isn’t so much about making sugar as it is about removing impurities and when you have a lot less impurities and very low sugar loss to molasses values making sugar is really pretty easy.”
Splitting duties
Green has served as American Crystal board chairman since 2011. Green was elected last year to his final eligible three-year term as a director for the Drayton Factory District. Finding time to fulfill both his duties as chairman and a grower is made easier by the calendar.
“That’s the one good thing about being on a board composed entirely of farmers,” Green said. “We all know and appreciate how congested time is at planting and harvesting. We intentionally manage our board duties around the farming seasons.”
In addition to being a beet grower since 1976, he also is a board member of the United Sugars Corporation, Midwest Agri-Commodities Company and American Sugarbeet Growers Association. He also served 12 years as a director of the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association.
At this point in time, he values serving as Crystal chairman more than actually growing beets.
“I’ve been farming for 40 seasons,” Green said. “I certainly helped when I was in high school and college but full time it has been 40 years. They both have their satisfactions. Since our son Nathan is more responsible for the farming on our farm than I am I would say my greatest satisfaction right now comes from serving the shareholders of American Crystal.”
Green appreciates being chairman.
“I certainly recognize that there are many, many shareholders who could do this job,” he said. “So it really comes down to being at the right place at the right time and having the privilege to do that. It’s a lot about luck.”
State of the sugar industry
“The best news is that American sugar producers—cane or beet—are very efficient,” Green said. “We can provide sugar to consumers in this country at about 29 percent less cost than the rest of the developed world pays.
“The problem is there is a difficult measure of that because the sugar commodity is the most price distorted commodity in the world, and it’s governments that distort that. That’s why sugar growers have to be so politically active.”
All growers benefit as well from the suspension agreements upheld between the U.S. and Mexican governments. The agreements may be reviewed annually, modified if both governments agree and last for five years.
“That’s good for Mexico,” Green said. “It’s good for the domestic producers and it’s good for the USDA to be able to manage a very good sugar program again. And most importantly it’s good for consumers. They should see a very reasonably priced commodity and a very reliable supply.
“I’m very proud of the sugar industry for the way they recognized the threat, the way they dealt with it and the way they helped come up with an agreement that works for everybody.”
Looking ahead
Retirement is approaching for Green.
“I think about it every day,” he said. “I cannot say that I know what I’ll do.”
Nor does he yet know when that day will arrive.
“I will tell you I’m married to a gal who is a grandmother of three and the most important thing in her eyes is being helpful to those kids,” Green said. “I don’t think we’re going to stray very far from where the grandchildren are growing up.”
Green’s take on life is best illustrated by Sir Isaac Newton’s famous quote: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
“His quote reminds me there’s nothing really special about me or my service or this time when you compare that to the people who came before me,” Green said. “My father for instance was one of the guys who sat in that room and decided whether or not to take the big risk of buying American Crystal and turning it into a co-op. And before him my grandfather had to figure out that maybe it was worth taking a chance on growing sugarbeets here.
“So I’m only sitting here in the position I am now because of the generations before me that have done incredible things.”