Harvesting with NDFB: You had me at sugar(beets)!

In today's episode, host Alisha Nord travels solo to Pembina County, North Dakota. Alisha rides along with Nathan Green in the sugar beet harvester. Nathan visits about how sugarbeet production works, where it gets harvested, and whether this year's harvest is a boom or a bust. 

To contact the hosts, email emmery@ndfb.org

Transcript

[Straight Talk theme]

[00:12] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. I am your host, Emmery Mehlhoff.

[00:16] Alisha: And I am Alisha Nord.

[00:17] Emmery: We are your Farm Bureau duo bringing you your competitive edge. In this episode. Alisha takes the show on the road to do a solo episode. Up in Pembina County, North Dakota, Alisha visits with Nathan Green in the harvester as the Green family harvest this year's crop of sugar beets. Nathan visits with Alisha about the growing strategies for sugar beets, challenges that come with raising and harvesting sugar beets, and whether the 2024 crop was a boom or a bust. Join us as we harvest across North Dakota.

[Straight Talk stinger]

[00:56] Alisha: Today. We are with Nathan Green in his tractor, harvesting sugar beets. Nathan, why don't you tell us about yourself and your family's operation.

[01:06] Nathan: I'm a fifth generation farmer. It's here at St. Thomas, North Dakota. We grow sugar beets, wheat soybeans, and navy beans. I farm with my father and my three sons are starting to be helpful on the farm. We grow about 1000 acres of sugar beets. My great grandfather started growing them in 1928, and we've grown sugar beets every year since.

[01:36] Alisha: Where are you currently at in your sugar beet harvest?

[01:40] Nathan: We are currently about 61% done. We've been digging sugar beets since the middle of August. We start with prepile, and on October 1 we started the campaign where we go 24 hours a day until we get them all in the pile.

[01:57] Alisha: So as far as harvesting sugar beets, that's a little bit different than corn and soybeans. So how do you guys know when sugar beets are ready to harvest? And then as far as the pilers, are they open all the time or how do you know when you can haul into the pilers?

[02:14] Nathan: Sugar beets don't, uh, really have a maturity date. Technically, they're a two year crop. They grow sugar in size the first year, and then after a cold spell like winter, a mild winter, they shoot a seed stock. So we just harvest them for the sugar. They don't really mature. We just have to get them in the pile before they freeze on the ground. And with the climate, North Dakota generally, October 1 is the safe start date. So we start on October 1 and just continue harvest until they're all in the pile.

[02:49] Alisha: Do the pilers let you know when they're open or if it's too warm or how does that work?

[02:56] Nathan: American Crystal has some policies on too cold or too warm, and they do a very good job communicating us through text messages and emails and their website. Generally, we can't put frozen beets in the pile, because they will spoil. And if they're a too hot, they also spoil. So they would like sugar beets that are about 33 degrees to 55 degrees, and it's a safe storage temperature.

[03:30] Alisha: So why don't you tell the listeners where we, where exactly are we harvesting? Well, I guess not. We. I'm not doing anything, but where are you harvesting sugar beets? And then where do you haul to?

[03:43] Nathan: So, we are currently harvesting sugar beets in Midland Township, southeast of St. Thomas. And sugar beets go to the factory in Drayton, North Dakota.

[03:56] Alisha: And now let's talk about,so we are in... Is this called the harvester?

[04:01] Nathan: Yep, this is the sugar beet harvester.

[04:04] Alisha: Okay, so let's talk about what piece of equipment we are in and what that does, and then what are the other types of pieces of equipment that are needed to harvest sugar beets and get them to the piler?

[04:15] Nathan: So we are in a sugar beet harvester. Its job is to pull the sugar beets out of the ground, knock the dirt off of them, and then raise them up high enough to get them into the truck box to haul to town. The only part of the sugar beet that we harvest is the root. And so the first job of harvest would be to knock the tops off. Uh, we have a defoliator that goes. It's got steel and rubber flails that spin, that chop up the tops and leave them in the field for fertilizer for next year.

[04:52] Alisha: And how many truckers do you have to have to keep sugar beet harvest going for you guys?

[04:58] Nathan: So everybody's allotted a number of trucks that they can use. I'm allowed six trucks to run 24 hours. It depends on how far away from the pilers you are and how many acres that you have to deliver. Currently, we run one big shift. We run about 15 hours a day with one crew to get our crop in the pile.

[05:24] Alisha: And can anyone raise sugar beets just like corn and soybeans or, I've heard of sugar beet stock. What exactly does that mean? And can you kind of explain a little more in detail about actually raising, um, sugar beets versus corn and soybeans?

[05:40] Nathan: So, the company that I am a grower owner in is american crystal sugar, based out of Moorhead, Minnesota, and it's a grower owned cooperative. So you have to purchase shares to have the right to deliver sugar beets. Anybody, any farmer can purchase shares and grow sugar beets, but you can't deliver sugar beets unless you have shares.

[06:09] Alisha: What's the typical growing season for sugar beets. And what would you say are the biggest challenges within growing sugar beets?

[06:18] Nathan: So, typically, we like to start planting middle of May. Frost is the hold up there. Sugar beet seed is really small compared to how big a sugar beet ends up in fall. And so it's pretty fragile. They grow, uh, two cotyledons that are kind of like helicopter wings, and the wind can blow them and snap them off. So to start the year, we gotta plant them fairly shallow, uh, inch and three quarters depth. So springtime rains are nice to get the crop started. And then, uh, not a lot of spring wind, but they grow pretty rapidly. And once they get six to eight leaves on them, they're, they're pretty strong, pretty, pretty good growing. And then throughout the year, there's different pests that we have to deal with. There's a sugar beet root maggot in my area that is particularly painful, flies into the sugar beet fields and it lays its eggs next to the sugar beets. And when the maggots hatch, they go down and they start eating the hair roots that, that can impact yield pretty badly. So we use pesticides, seed treatments, in order to stop those. And then the next problem would be Cercospora blows in on the wind and puts spots on the leaves, brown spots. It kills that leaf surface, so it doesn't have the chance to use photosynthesis to grow. So we have to apply fungicides. There are some technology, there's a CR+ now that gives them some tolerance to the Cercospra, and then we chop the leaves off and dig them out of the ground.

[08:16] Alisha: What type of crop rotation do you have to, have to keep the sugar beet soil healthy.

[08:23] Nathan: So I typically have three years in between, three different crops in between sugar beets to try to spread out root diseases. And that seems to be the, the longer you can spread it out, the better. Economically, it's good to have sugar beets on the farm.

[08:43] Alisha: So I was just going to say that kind of leads into my next question. What, what would be the biggest cost associated with sugar beets?

[08:50] Nathan: Oh, there's a lot of technology in our seed. They've done a very good job through research and breeding to give us really high quality seed. And with the high quality seed comes a pretty good price. So seed costs are pretty good. It is pretty expensive to have the shares. If you, if you do not own the shares, you can find somebody with shares and you can joint venture, you pay them for the right to grow their sugar beets, and then harvest costs are with the harvester and the trucking. Through the genetics of the seed, we've gotten to where we regularly get 30 tons of sugar beets to the acre. When I started, we would hope for a 20-ton crop, and now a 20-ton crop would be a giant disappointment.

[09:48] Alisha: What type of labor force is required to lift sugar beets? And do you find the struggle to find good help and just help in general as one of your bigger struggles when it comes to harvesting? Or is that not seeming to be an issue?

[10:06] Nathan: That's a pretty, pretty giant issue. Labor and harvest time is hard. We have four people that help during the year, and then we could have a harvest crew as big as 14 people. Currently, we get by with nine people. We just, like I said before, run one shift. But anybody listening, that's close, we'll take all the help we can get. Any sugar beet farmer would love to have extra. There's a truck portal that you can find to help. But I got a mail carrier, I got fuel truck guy. I got a guy that comes up from Arizona. He's come up for 22 years. Just all you need is a regular class D driver's license to drive a semi. There's lots of training videos. American Crystal does a good job. We preach safety. We hope that nothing bad happens. And we try real hard to make sure people don't get too tired and that everybody is safe and gets to go home at the end of the day.

[11:26] Alisha: So that's a little shout out for Green Farms. If anybody would like to come harvest sugar beets, come on out and we'll find you a job. So, going into sugar beet prices, how are prices looking right now? And what are the biggest factors that determine how the price fluctuates in the U.S.?

[11:45] Nathan: So, since sugar is common table food, the USDA has a program that manages an adequate supply of sugar. The last few years, they've had pretty decent sugar prices, along with the other commodities. So this year, the price is trending down a bit. We do import sugar into the United States. I'd love to grow it all for you, but we are up against our processing limits at the factories.

[12:20] Alisha: Consumers that are out there, what brand of sugar should they be buying?

[12:26] Nathan: Well, it doesn't matter. Sugar is sugar cane sugar and beet sugar, once you process it and get to the sugar, they're identically the same. So, uh, just get american grown sugar. Uh, personally, if you see the American Crystal Sugar in the store, I would like you to buy that. But any sugar is good with me.

[12:51] Alisha: Can you tell me what is the difference since it's kind of on probably the consumer's mind and everybody out there is talking about artificial sweeteners, what is the difference between artificial sweeteners and regular, real sugar beet sugar?

[13:07] Nathan: Artificial sweeteners are chemicals that are lab created and natural grown sugar is pure and made from nature. So I feel that it's healthier and more natural. People have been eating sugar, real sugar, for eons, and artificial sweeteners have just come up recently and are untested. So I think it's safer to use sugar. It tastes good, it's natural, and like everything in life, if you enjoy it in moderation, it's good for you.

[13:53] Alisha: I would agree. I have a sweet tooth and I love eating sugar, but in moderation, like you said. And then to wrap up today's episode, the question that we are asking every harvester is, is this year's crop a boom or a bust?

[14:08] Nathan: This year's crop is definitely a boom. We probably produced more sugar beets collectively than we can process, and so we'll leave some on the ground. Nature is pretty amazing how it allows us to grow crops like these.

[14:26] Alisha: Well, thank you, Nathan. And thank you for allowing me to come into the tractor cab and harvest some sugar beets up with you. In what county are we in? Pembina County.

[Straight Talk stinger]

[14:40] Emmery: You've been listening to straight talk with NDFB. If you have any questions or you want to be featured on Harvesting with NDFB, email us at emmery@ndfb.org.

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