SIDNEY, Mont. – Since mid-September, American Crystal Sugar has twice reduced the percentage of sugar beet acres it anticipated producers would have to destroy because of over production. The latest contingency plan, according to the American Crystal Sugar Web site, is for Red River Valley producers to destroy 5 percent, down from 15 percent on Sept. 15. “American Crystal does not take leaving/destroying sugar beets in the field lightly,” said American Crystal public relations manager Jeff Schweitzer. “Our board and management team have conducted a thorough analysis on alternatives for unused agricultural production.” The harvest reduction will not affect sugar beet producers in western North Dakota who contract to Sidney Sugars Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of American Crystal Sugar, located in Sidney, Mont.

Submitted Photo Sugar beet producers in McKenzie and Williams counties have nearly completed their 2007 harvest and are expected to supply more than 20 percent of the production at Sidney Sugars in Montana.

Steve Sing, general manager of Sidney Sugars, said all the beets — about 43,000 acres — contracted to Sidney Sugars will be harvested.

Those acres include 10,000 in McKenzie County and about 4,200 acres in Williams County, which represents about 21 percent of the production for Sidney Sugars. The remainder comes from Richland, Dawson, Roosevelt and Sheridan counties in Montana.

The harvest on both sides of the border is nearly complete, according to Sing. Barring inclement weather, he said 100 percent of the contracted beets should be picked up by this time next week.

Border producers have seen their share of interesting weather conditions this harvest. First, there were two shutdowns because of heat, according to Sing. On Oct. 1 and 2, root temperatures rose above 55 degrees and sugar beets at that temperature or higher aren’t safe to store. Rain stopped harvest on Oct. 5, but it quickly resumed and has been going strong since.

“The 2008 harvest has been one of the best in recent history,” Sing said. “We are 77 percent complete as of this morning (Tuesday). Several growers have finished completely.”

Sing said yields are above average for all the districts in the service area and they are about what was expected.

“The North Dakota producers should be near 24 tons per acre,” Sing said. “Their sugar content will be above the factory average. (Overall) the sugar content and purity is down slightly from our expectations.”

According to Schweitzer, harvesting sugar beets that will not be used to make sugar is very costly for the shareholders of American Crystal. It’s often more cost effective for producers to mark out some acreage and plow the plants under following harvest instead of feeding livestock or using the product for other purposes.

“Labor, equipment and fuel costs are higher than ever,” Schweitzer said. “The resulting potential revenue gained from uses as a livestock feed simply does not pencil profitably.”

The one possible downfall to destroying 5 percent of the crop is there could be yield loss on a rotational crop the following year because of slow root degradation, according to the American Crystal Web site. In some cases, if the beets begin to grow again the following spring, those re-emergent plants will utilize some of the nitrogen set aside for the new crop, thus reducing yields.

Abundant oilfield jobs in the Williston Basin have caused a shortage of workers to complete the sugar beet harvest, at least in Montana.

The Monday edition of a Sidney newspaper ran an ad asking for workers until late October to participate in the harvest in the communities of Culbertson, Glendive, Sidney, Fairview, Savage and Terry.