Sugar rush: Michigan Sugar growers battle wet fields to harvest before ground freezes

(The Bay City Times) – MONITOR TOWNSHIP —As a sugar beet grower, John Burk is concerned about wet fields and freezing temperatures more so than normal this year.

Burk, of Monitor Township, grows 425 acres of sugar beets but has harvested only about 315 acres to date.

He, like many other Michigan Sugar Co. growers, are behind schedule due to a wet spring that delayed planting and recent rains that have left fields too wet for harvesting.

“I should have been done yesterday,” Burk said Tuesday.

Officials at Monitor Township-based Michigan Sugar say what happens this week may determine how successful this year’s sugar processing campaign goes.

“We’re expecting this week to be the busiest of the season,” said Ray VanDriessche, director of government and community relations for Michigan Sugar, 2600 S. Euclid Ave. “Normally we have our harvest wrapped up by Nov. 1, but we still have another 10 days to two weeks left because of the wet spring.

“In the past, we’ve seen the weather turn really bad for us, and that’s where everybody’s concerned.”

As of Monday, Michigan Sugar’s growers had harvested 1.8 million tons of an expected 4-million ton crop.

The grower-owned cooperative has more than 900 growers in 21 Michigan counties and Ontario.

Burk said he is most concerned that wet fields could push the harvest back even further, increasing the risk of the ground freezing before the beets can be pulled.

“It’s no picnic out there in the fields right now,” he said. “The crop looks good — tonnage is what we expected, sugar content is up — getting them harvested is what is going to be the issue.”

Today’s forecast calls for rain, but Friday is expected to be clear.

VanDriessche said muddy fields create a number of challenges for harvesting.

“It’s tough when the fields are soggy and you’re trying to harvest,” he said. “We try to keep as much mud and dirt out of the beets as they come into the holding piles. The mud is hard on the trucks’ drive trains because of the hard pull, and they can sink down considerably in water saturated fields.

“It can lead to long days where you have to put safety ahead of the harvest while you wait for fields to dry out.”

VanDriessche said that with forecasted temperatures in the 50s to low 60s over the next few days, he is hopeful growers will be able to harvest their beets before the ground freezes.

“Fortunately, the temperatures are cooperating, even if the rain isn’t,” he said.

If the ground freezes before the crop is harvested, it could be a big problem for individual growers and the cooperative as a whole, VanDriessche said.

“Any time that you could lose a considerable amount of your crop, it could be devastating,” he said. “It makes all of your production costs go up and will reduce what could have been quite a financial gain.”

VanDriessche said production was down considerably in other sugar beet growing regions of the country due to poor weather conditions, giving Michigan Sugar the chance to move ahead with a good harvest.

“We’re fairly pleased with what we’re seeing come in,” VanDriessche said. “The tonnage is about what we expected and the sugar content is about 17.5 percent.”

Even with warm temperatures forecasted this week, Burk said he is concerned that Michigan’s infamously unpredictable weather could turn frosty before he can get his beets out of the ground.

“We usually see the ground start freezing up in mid-November,” he said. “It’s starting to be a concern, especially when you look at New York, which already had a foot of snow.

“Michigan weather can change on a dime.”

Written by Holly Setter @ The Bay City Times