Moorehead, MN. American Crystal Sugar Co. has developed a plan to plow under up to 10 percent of its sugar beet acres if the crop is so large it can't be processed by the end of May.
American Crystal told shareholder-growers of the contingency plan in a memo dated Aug. 11, saying the co-op board could order the beets destroyed in the field in mid-October.
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In the 1999 processing year, Crystal had to destroy about 400,000 tons of beets that had been in storage but were spoiling. However, the company's processing and storage capacities are much greater now.
While growers don't want to plow beets under, Astrup said the issue boils down to maximizing grower profit. He said it's cheaper to destroy beets in the field than it is for farmers to harvest them, haul them and for the co-op to keep them stored, only to have to pay costs to remove spoiling beets from piles and spread them back out onto the fields in the spring.
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