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“Sugarbeet Report” presented by NDSU Extension, features growing tips from NDSU sugar beet specialists and researchers.
This is the Sugarbeet Report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season. Prepile for American Crystal Sugar Company is about to begin, but even now, a timely rain would go a long way for the entire crop. According to Joe Hastings, agronomist for the American Crystal Sugar Company. Joe, how is this year's crop looking?
Joe Hastings:Yeah. The Sugarbeet crop across River Valley does look good. It has great yield potential. We have a nice shaped root. They're healthy. The canopy's healthy. So that's good. But one of the things that's really becoming the dominant factor influencing our potential is the drought we're experiencing. So we're seeing most districts experience various levels of drought stress with only localized rainfall giving relief. And probably those worst areas of the valley where it's the most dry is the central part of the valley right now. But with that healthy canopy, the Casper leaf spot has been a primary focus of course this time of year for us, but we're not seeing a lot of pressure this year because of the dryness, but also because of timely applications of fungicides that have occurred. With this drought conditions, our yield projections may be softened a bit because of it.
Bruce Sundeen:How do you track the crop potential?
Joe Hastings:We take yield sample pulls where we go out five times during the crop year and take samples just to see how that weight and quality is tracking with previous years. So the second sample pull we took was last week and due to the dry conditions, yeah, we were a little bit lower than average. So we're probably one and a half tons below the five year average for that time period. That was part of our decision factor too. It was 14.7 ton at that time on average for the valley. Also, saw lower than average growth from the first week sample pool to this week. So we can kind of see how that trend is. One thing in contrast to that though is our sugar content has been at very high levels. So that ratio of moisture in the beat to sugar content, that percentage is higher than average. So we know we got a sweeter beat out there. It's just, okay, now let's get that into the lifter and start making sugar out of it. But I think with that nice shape that we have, it can respond very quickly if we start getting some timely rains now. I call it pent up yield. It's just sitting there ready to go, a nice elongated root. It's a nice healthy root so it should respond fairly good.
Bruce Sundeen:Joe, let's talk about prepile and why it's important.
Joe Hastings:Well, it's a way for us to maximize our factory run time and produce sugar, right, to sell to our customers. It also allows our shareholders to spread those fixed costs from the factories across more tons so we can maximize our acres and our tons that the company can produce into refined sugar. Also, it lets us have an early production to meet customer demand and provide a gradual startup for the factories. And typically at prepile, we take anywhere from 15 to 18% of the crop in at that time to process and it's always mid August to the end of September and October 1 is when we hopefully can start our stockpile harvest, which just means that we get it in the piles for long term storage because during pre pile, we can only retain about a three to four day supply of inventory on the ground for the factories because it's so warm. Pre pile can be interesting to manage with heat, with rain and making sure we have enough beets for the factory so we don't run out of beets. So it's an intense management time as well. You'd only think, Oh, you're just starting up with pre pile. No, it's a full on very intense to make sure that we have enough supply in the ground. There's some strategies growers can use to focus on during pre pile. A lot of growers just focus on one field. It's probably one of their best fields or one of their worst. And you say, well, why would it be one of the worst? Basically in each case you're looking at the field that is least likely to improve. So you want to capture where it's at now compared to the other fields and take advantage of the Prepel Premium that our growers have on that field. A lot of growers just manage one field with a high sugar variety, manage your nitrogen so it's not too high nitrogen so it can sugar up quicker to maximize that pre pile delivery. Other fields they may focus on are fields farther away from the factory. So if they have a long haul, they might be taking that field in earlier to the piling site that has a long distance so they don't have to truck as many tons and take advantage of the pre pile to do that, to be more timely, more efficient with their deliveries. Or also just focus on fields that are difficult to harvest if it gets wet, heavier soil, bad roads, things like that are good fields to concentrate on. But what you mainly see too is growers that are focusing on taking out their headlands and splits. So that's a management decision so that they can roll into a field during stockpile harvest and just get started too. We'll be starting this week, August 14. You'll be seeing more beet trucks on the road. Just be safe out there with driving around our piling sites and in the countryside.
Bruce Sundeen:Thanks, Joe. Our guest has been Joe Hastings, agronomist for the American Crystal Sugar Company. This has been the Sugarbeet Report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season.