The Michigan Ag Today Sugarbeet Harvest Report is made possible by Betaseed: breeding confidence.
Michigan Sugar is starting permanent piling on Friday. However, they’re asking growers to not bring all their beets to the factory’s piling grounds.
Tonnage for Michigan beets has been strong. For this reason, Rob Gerstenberger, Betaseed’s Michigan sales manager, says the company may ask its growers to leave 5 percent of their crop behind.
“That’s pretty common with other beet co-ops across the country—you can only make your best guess at what size crop you’re going to have and how many acres to plant because you know what your processing capabilities should be per day,” he says. “You only have so many days where you can process—you’d like to be done processing by the end of March.”
In a release from Michigan Sugar, its grower-owners are expected to harvest 5.4 million tons of beets, which is up from an average of 4.6 million tons.
“Storing and slicing sugarbeets into April brings with it a lot of unknowns, especially related to temperature and weather,” says Jim Ruhlman, executive vice president. “These are good challenges to have, but they are challenges nonetheless.”
Gerstenberger says that timely rains from June on helped the beets pack on the tonnages farmers are seeing. A lack of cooler weather to start fall has kept allowing beets to get larger.
“These warm temperatures and moisture kept that crop growing,” he says. “The best thing for a factory or this type of business is to run your factories at maximum capacity, and that’s the best return back to the growers. It’s better to have too many tons than not enough tons.”
After heavy rainfall from two weeks ago, the sugars in the beets have been diluted. More rainfall in the area Thursday won’t help matters either. Cercospora pressure also continues to weigh on this year’s crop.
