Most of American Crystal Sugar Co.’s factories apparently will wind up their slicing campaigns by early March.
That’s two and a half months earlier than the company’s average finish date of mid-May and may be the first time in the company’s history that the majority of its factories are done slicing sugar beets this early in the year.
About 2,650 Red River Valley farmers in Minnesota and North Dakota grow sugar beets for American Crystal Sugar Co.
The company’s factory in Hillsboro, N.D., finished slicing the 2019 crop on Feb. 3, and the Crookston, Minn., factory wrapped up slicing on Feb. 15, according to American Crystal Facebook posts.
Elsewhere in Minnesota, the Moorhead factory, meanwhile, is expected to be done slicing this week, and East Grand Forks on March 1, said a farmer who grows sugar beets for American Crystal. The company is estimating that its factory in Drayton, N.D., will be done in mid-April, the farmer said.
American Crystal management did not return phone calls seeking to verify the information about when its factories finished slicing. Forum News Service also sought to ask questions about what effect the early completion of slicing would have on the company financially and whether it could prompt layoffs in the factories.
“American Crystal doesn’t typically release the level of details of any of our facilities that you are requesting,” Jeff Schweitzer, American Crystal Sugar Co. spokesman, said in an email. “Much of the performance and employee information you are asking we view as proprietary and/or competitive in nature.
“The story of American Crystal’s 2019-20 sugar beet processing campaign relates to the 2019 crop harvest in which roughly one-third of the sugar beet crop was left stranded in fields due to wet, cold and snowy fall weather,” Schweitzer said via another email. “With a much smaller than typical crop size, all of our factories are finishing their beet slicing campaigns much earlier than normal.
“In a typical year, American Crystal targets mid-May as an end to beet slicing operations. This campaign, however, is not normal,” Schweitzer said in the email.
The 2019 sugar beet harvest, like that of other crops, was not anywhere near normal, either. Heavy rains in September, and then more rain and snow in October, made fields too muddy to harvest without pulling trucks and tractors through the fields. Farmers who did pull the harvest equipment often broke parts and had to make expensive repairs.
On Nov. 9, American Crystal told its farmers to stop harvesting beets after a freeze that made the crop unsuitable for future storage. The company told farmers whose crop was left in the field they would have to pay $343 per unharvested acre. About one-third of the 2019 crop – 115,000 acres – was unharvested. Production in 2019 totaled 7.7 million tons, 30% less than the 11 million tons harvested in 2018.
As a result of the reduced production in 2019, American Crystal Sugar projected sugar beet payments of $37 per ton, $17.78 per ton lower than last year.