The original definition of a family farm was one that passed down from generation to generation, where the involved family members did the bulk of the work and earned their living.
While USDA statistics show many young people moving on from life on the farm to easier occupations that promise better pay, Patrick Olsen isn’t one of them.
Patrick, at age 38 and a family man himself, is carrying on the family tradition in partnership with his father, Robert, on a farm started by his grandfather, John Olsen. Up until five years ago that included a herd of dairy cows, he said, but the herd was sold, and now they grow potatoes, wheat, and sugarbeets.
Due to the cold, wet spring that’s kept farmers out of the fields, this week they’re getting the first of their 250 acres of beet seed in the ground, but Patrick says it shouldn’t put them more than a couple of weeks behind at harvest time. Besides, he says, if harvest is late, the colder temperatures give a boost to the sugar content in the beets.
This week he was operating a roller harrow in front of a seed planter on a 100-acre plot of land off Bond Road and had time to talk for a while when he took on the temporary care of his two young sons while his wife, Rachel, attended a meeting.
Although his grandfather opted out of beet growing back in the 1970s and ‘80s when the beet growing industry went into a decline, Patrick said, by the time he finished school, served a mission for his church and returned to the farm, a grower cooperative had been formed in Idaho and Oregon, and that brought about a resurgence in the industry.
The Olsens bought shares in the co-op, making them one of the 51 farmers in Bingham County still involved in sugarbeet growing. Being a farmer is not just hard work, Patrick says, it’s interesting because of the many different things you must learn.
One of these is that every crop, whether alfalfa, grain, potatoes, or sugarbeets requires a different type of husbandry.
For instance, he said, sugarbeet seed likes a firmer seedbed than potatoes do, so once the ground is prepared for planting, they go over it with a roller harrow to pack it down a little before the seed goes in. Beets also require less fertilizer than other crops, particularly potatoes.
He said sugarbeets only need 50 units of nitrogen incorporated into the soil pre-planting, and that’s sufficient to last throughout the growing season. As well, advances in agronomy help to make a farmer’s job more successful than it once was. “The reason we plant the variety of seed we do is that it’s genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup.”
He was referring to a pesticide so efficient it kills all types of broadleaf plants as well as grass, but the genetic engineering makes it possible to spray it on a field of beets with the assurance that only weeds will be affected.
Without it, Patrick said, “Beet growers had to spray about once a week throughout the growing season to keep the weeds down.” Prior to the advent of chemical pesticides, he added, the growers hired crews of field workers to remove the weeds by hoeing, which was not only time consuming but expensive.
Beet growers of even 20 years ago must marvel at the wonders of technology. Not only were they forced to hire crews to remove the weeds from their crops, but also to make sure the beet plants didn’t end up too close together.
“Beet seed is small,” he said, “about a quarter the size of a pea. In the old days the planters put down so many seeds in one spot the growers had to hire people to come in with hoes and thin out the plants once they sprouted and started to grow, or the plants would be so thick they couldn’t thrive.”
But that was before the equipment companies developed precision planters, he said. “Not only are they capable of planting a single seed at a time, they can plant up to 12 rows at a time, so work goes much faster.”
Beets are topped just before harvest – a chore also performed by hand at one time — to remove the green leaves and stems so the roots will store better after they’re dug and piled, Patrick said, and there are now beet topping machines that can handle 12 rows at a time as well as dig up six to 12 rows during harvest.
The black bean aphid is one of the main enemies of beet plants, Patrick said. It settles in the crown of the plant, lays its eggs, and the whole family begins to feed on the leaves, which can easily destroy the plant. But, he added, the seed they use is also genetically engineered to be resistant to the insect.
Since sugarbeet growers are paid by a combination of tonnage and the sugar content of their crop, if a growing season goes well, Patrick said its end would see them harvesting 40-45 tons of beets per acre that process out with 17 to 21 percent sugar content. Colder temperatures increase the sugar content, he said, that’s why beets are always the last crop to be harvested in the fall.
Like all other sugarbeet growers in the area, the Olsens are members of the Snake River Sugar Company, a grower-owned cooperative that operates under the name Amalgamated Sugar. The number of acres they can plant each year depends on the amount of stock they own in the co-op.
Because there are far fewer sugar refineries than there were when the industry first came to Southeast Idaho, the company controls acreage to keep the amount of beets grown within the number that existing refineries can process. “If you want more acreage you have to buy the stock from someone else, maybe a grower who’s retiring,” Patrick said.
Sugar from the Amalgamated refineries is sold under the brand name White Satin. Support your local sugarbeet growers.