Frozen harvest leaves bitter taste for sugar beet farmers in US

HALLOCK: Weather during harvest season in the US Red River Valley, a fertile sugar beet region in Minnesota and North Dakota, has to farmers felt like a series of plagues. Rain and snow pelted crops in September and October. That was followed by a blizzard, and then warm temperatures that left fields a boggy mess.

Next came a deep freeze, ruining the underground sugar beet crop, and dealing a harsh blow to farm incomes. “I can take a couple of perils from Mother Nature and after that I’m on my knees,” said Dan Younggren, 59, who was unable to harvest 500 acres of sugar beets, or 40% of his plantings near Hallock, Minnesota. “We’ve never had a situation like this.”

Extreme weather has hampered planting and harvesting of corn, soybeans, and other crops throughout 2019 across the United States and Canadian farm belts. But in Minnesota and North Dakota, which accounted for 56% of the US sugar beet acres this year, the freeze is a double whammy. Sugar beet growers’ contracts with processors, which operate as farmer-owned cooperatives, require those who leave unharvested acres to pay a fee to the cooperative so it can pay its bills in leaner years.

Younggren’s five-generation farm must pay American Crystal Sugar a fixed cost of $343 for every unharvested acre, totaling roughly $171,500 to be docked from payments for beets he did harvest. On Monday, the US government authorized the import of an additional 100,000 short tons of Mexican refined sugar due to the harvest issues. The United States is the world’s third-largest sugar importer after Indonesia and China, buying 2.8 million tons in 2018-19, according to the US Department of Agriculture. —Reuters