Beet growers in American Crystal Sugar Company's districts can now harvest as much as 95 percent of their crop, up from 90 percent previously. The co-op's board of directors decided Monday afternoon to reduce at-risk acreage from 10 to 5 percent of the company's stock acres after re-evaluating the situation.

"Given the deliveries to date in Crookston and district-wide, Crystal is releasing 5 percent of the reserved acres," said Corey Kreutzberg, harvest maintenance supervisor for the Crookston factory. "The company is continually monitoring and the board will let us know more Thursday on what to do next. They'll re-evaluate to see where we're at then."

Under the contingency plan, all shareholders are asked to reserve a certain percentage of their contracted acres for possible destruction. This is due to a larger than usual volume of sugar beets coming in for processing, more than the factories are able to handle during the regular campaign. American Crystal will determine if some or all of the reserved acres can be delivered in its final plan.

If followed through, the contingency plan would require farmers to destroy the reserved beets, typically by plowing them back into the ground. According to company officials, this is a much more economical alternative to going through all the steps of harvesting, transporting, storing and later discarding rotten beets that factories could not process. Last year, growers destroyed 8 percent of their beet crops.

"It's a wonderful crop this year, just huge, with good sugar content," said Kreutzberg. "Harvest at the Crookston yard is more than 90 percent complete. So it's starting to wind down, but now with the rain, the misery level is high."

He noted that weather conditions other than the rain have been more favorable this year than last, with no hard frost and temperatures running in the moderate range. As a result, the harvest may be completed earlier, although this week's predicted rainfall could put a damper on it.

All Crookston piling stations except the Crookston yard are currently running on shift. With the Crookston yard at near capacity and trucks finding it difficult to park, the north and south stations are running split shifts.