FIRESTONE — Spring rain and a good snow runoff has the region’s sugar beet growers expecting high yields as they begin harvesting. “I think everybody is going to have an excellent crop this year,” said Mike Rademacher of Rademacher Farms, which grows on several parcels around Longmont. On Tuesday, he drove a tractor pulling a beet digger on a 16-acre field near Firestone, kicking off the harvesting season for the family farm. Three large trucks took turns following the digger, which yanks the beets out of the ground and deposits them in the truck bed to be hauled to a nearby scale.

Richard and Mike Rademacher harvest beets in Firestone on Tuesday. Spring rain and a good snow runoff has the region’s sugar beet growers expecting high yields as they begin harvesting. Times-Call/Richard M. Hackett

With just a few rows left, Rademacher jumped out of the tractor with a smile.

This particular field didn’t produce well because of the condition of the soil and a little flooding, but most of the Rademachers’ 300 acres of beets look great, he said.

“We might do a couple more fields today. I’d sure like to see what they’re like,” he said.

Though it accounts for less than 1 percent of the overall agricultural receipts in Colorado, the sugar beet industry still generates $92 million in gross revenue in the state, according to Western Sugar Cooperative.  Most Colorado beet growers expect a pretty good harvest, said Kent Wimmer, director of shareholder administration for Western Sugar, which is made up of about 1,400 beet farmers in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana.

Western Sugar’s lone processing plant in Fort Morgan began making sugar for the first time this year on Monday, and most of the farmers Wimmer has talked to are optimistic.

Local farmer Craig Sterkel hopes his 200 acres of sugar beet fields will produce about 25 tons of beets an acre, a little above the 24-ton average.

“It seemed like it was a pretty good growing season,” he said, adding that spring moisture was key.
That’s in contrast to last year, when local farmers reported harvesting between 2 tons and 20 tons an acre.
Both Sterkel and Rademacher called last year a disaster for sugar beets, largely because of extremely dry conditions after planting.

“We just couldn’t get the beets to germinate in the ground,” said Rich Rademacher, Mike Rademacher’s brother, who also runs the farm. “We planted right around the first of April, and we didn’t get rain until mid-May.”
But the low beet yields last year were largely isolated to the Weld County region, as Western Sugar still had an average year overall, Wimmer said.

This year, high corn prices had many farmers planting corn instead of beets. That could hurt Western Sugar.
Wimmer said Western Sugar tries to get 135,000 acres of beets planted each year, but this year it only saw 126,000 acres planted.

Lack of irrigation water in some parts of Weld County also contributed to the shortfall, he said.

The beet harvest continues through November. Western Sugar plans to make sugar through February.