Nebraska's Early sugar beet harvest underway

By MARK GASCHLER 
Star-Herald

SCOTTSBLUFF — The early sugar beet harvest is underway, as farmers begin digging up and hauling their crops in for processing.

Gary Stone, an extension educator at Panhandle Research and Extension Center, said 2018 was a good year for sugar beet growth.

“We had plenty of water for the crop,” Stone said. “The temperatures, for the most part, were just about right, maybe a little higher than normal. Fields that didn’t get hail certainly did well.”

Stone added that the early harvest has on. “They bring the beets in and put them in a pile,” he said, “and those beets are still a living organism and they’re perspiring. If they get too hot, they start to rot.”

Jerry Darnell, an agronomist at Western Sugar, said that, as of Sept. 27, the early crop is averaging 16.1 percent sugar content, on track for the estimated 17.7 percent, and 1.39 sugar losses to molasses, and averaging 33.5 tons per acre. Roughly 12 percent, or 5,500 acres, have been harvested so far. Full harvest is expected to begin Oct. 6, when the weather is cool enough for Western Sugar to pile the beets.

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October 1, 2018 at 04:44PM