Prompts winter weather advisories as cold air moves in Friday night

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

It was a tale of two extremes for sugar beet farmers attending the American Crystal Sugar Cooperative’s annual meeting in Fargo, N.D., Thursday. 

The co-op reported that a strong 2018 crop generated a total of $609 million in payments to farmer shareholders, or $54.78 per ton of sugar beets.  

"But then the 2019 harvest was just a whole other story with the reduced volume, reduced sugar content, and because of that, a reduced payment per ton to our shareholders," said American Crystal president and CEO Tom Astrup. 

In stark contrast to 2018, the weather-damaged 2019 crop is expected to bring a total payment of $278 million, or $37 per ton.  

Sugar beet farmers face a 'devastating' hit as nearly a third of the crop sits frozen in the fields

Farmers waited, hoped as weather delayed harvest

"The mood is glum," said Astrup. "It's a year in which everybody's going to lose money on their sugar beet crop, and of course things aren't the best with anything else that they're raising right now, whether it's corn or soybeans or wheat or anything else."

Cold, wet weather kept many farmers in the Red River Valley of northwest Minnesota and eastern North Dakota out of fields during harvest. About 118,000 acres of sugar beets were unharvested by the time the cold weather set in. That's nearly a third of the crop — and the smaller harvest means American Crystal Sugar’s five processing plants will likely shut down in February or March instead of operating into May as they normally do. 

Because of the cooperative structure, farmers who were unable to harvest beets are required to make a payment of $343 for each acre they left in the ground. That money will help offset factory operating costs. 

Astrup said the cooperative will likely need to reduce planned capital investments over the next two years, and will be unable to fulfill contracts to provide sugar to large customers. 

The USDA has already indicated it will increase sugar imports from Mexico to make up for lost domestic sugar production. 

American Crystal Sugar is the largest beet sugar producer in the United States.

Business and Economic News

Agriculture

NewsPartners

Dan Gunderson

Author

The largest beet sugar producer in the U.S. expects payments for the weather-damaged 2019 crop to fall more than $300 million under last year.

water standing on a muddy sugar beet field

Weather takes big bite out of sugar beet profits

Go Deeper.

Like this?