Farmers producing record sugar beet harvest

LOVELL — Growers in the Western Sugar Cooperative Lovell Factory District are producing a bumper crop, and the factory is humming as the fall campaign begins, factory manager Shannon Ellis reported at the Lovell Area Chamber of Commerce membership luncheon Monday.

“We had a pretty good crop this year,” Ellis said. “We planted 14,439 acres, and right now we’re looking at probably harvesting 458,000 tons of beets from those acres. And that’s about an average of 31.72 (tons per acre), which is a record. If it comes through, it will be a record for the cooperative in Lovell.”

Sugar content of the beets is also looking strong, he said, currently in the 16 to 17-percent range and heading to around 18 percent.

The factory is pretty well staffed up, Ellis said.

“We usually keep 39 year round employees, and then during this time of year, when we start our campaign, we go up to about 110/115, so we hire about 70 seasonal employees. I think we’re right at four or five short. So actually, it’s a pretty good year. We’ve been far shorter than that in some years. The starting wage is $18.50 (per hour).”

The campaign started last Tuesday, Sept. 10, Ellis said.

“It was a pretty good startup,” he said. “We had a few bumps, you know, we always do. There’s always leaks and things like that you didn’t get over the year. This crop should be in about the 15th of February.”

The company put a lot of money into capital projects and maintenance over the summer, Ellis said.

“We had some capital projects where we spent close to $2½ million on capital projects, and then probably a little over a million on just regular maintenance,” he said. “And so we spent a lot of money on the plant to get it ready, and it actually is running pretty well and starting to line out pretty good right now.”

Ellis said the cooperative is on a good footing right now.

“Over the last couple years, sugar prices have gone up, and so that helps everybody,” he said. “And the farmers are getting a lot more per ton in their pockets now, so it’s actually looking pretty good right now.”

Growing acreage is right about where it needs to be, he added.

“We’re actually limited on how much we can do, and there’s a couple of factors with that,” Ellis said. “One is the storage. We’re actually quite a little sugar factory, and so we only can slice a certain amount every day. So we start early in September, and right now we’re just harvesting enough beets to keep us running. So we don’t actually start stockpiling until October.

“And once you start stockpiling, then they’re in danger of spoilage. So, if you get really hot days, you know, things like that, they can spoil. You can lose a significant amount of sugar just in pile loss.”

The aeration system the company put in a few years ago helps, he said.

“Just to keep that last pile pretty cool for us, it stabilizes it, and it actually works out pretty good for us every year,” he noted.

All of the sugar produced at the Lovell plant is shipped out in bulk rail cars, he said.

The final product is top quality sugar, Ellis said, thanks to the growers and the factory.

“The beet quality here is phenomenal, and that makes the factory manager look pretty good,” he said. “It’s a lot to do with the beets. They’re just such good quality beets, and it’s the growing season, the ground, and how they take care of them is second to none, really. And so when you go to process those beets, it makes it a lot easier on a factory manager to make sugar out of that.”