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California sugar beet growers are turning to other crops as talks to keep open sugar plants in Tracy and Woodland have gone nowhere. 

An industry official estimates 20,000 acres that would have been planted in beets, producing a crop potentially worth about $25 million, have turned to other commodities. The culprit? Sugar prices at 15-year lows. 
While consumers may enjoy the advantage of low or steady prices for sugar and sweets, it leaves San Joaquin County beet growers facing tough choices. 

"Normally, I would have had some spring beets for next year planted, and I don't," Stockton grower Paul Sanguinetti said Friday. Despite low grain prices, he opted to plant grain corn instead. 

"The sugar beet ground that I had designated, ... I had spent money out there" (before learning he'd have no place to sell the crop), Sanguinetti said. "You have to plant something out there to try to recoup." 

Imperial Sugar Co. of Sugarland, Texas, the largest U.S. marketer and processor of refined sugar, plans to stop processing sugar beets at facilities in Tracy and Woodland at year's end. It had offered to sell those plants to beet growers in an effort to keep them open, but talks have gone nowhere. 

"The price of sugar is so low, we just can't afford to buy the plants and service any kind of debt," explained Ben Goodwin, executive director of the California Beet Growers Association. Still, he said, the growers' group hopes to make some arrangement to keep the plants operating. 

"We're still trying to put it together," Goodwin said Friday, declining to offer any further details. 
He estimated that statewide about 20,000 acres that would have been planted in beets this year for harvest in spring 2001 are now host to other crops. Trying to predict that crop's value is problematic, but based on 1999 returns in San Joaquin County, it could be roughly $25 million. 

The San Joaquin County Agricultural Commissioner's Office reported that the area's sugar beet growers harvested 11,200 acres and collected a little more than $13 million on the crop last year. "Our next window of opportunity is planting in October, November, to be harvested in July and August of next year," Goodwin said. Sanguinetti, who also grows tomatoes, wheat, alfalfa and walnuts, sees a more urgent need to secure some arrangement to keep the Tracy plant open. 
"If something doesn't happen real soon, it's going to cause a lot more problems," he predicted.   For example, Sanguinetti said, current sugar-plant workers facing the prospect of losing their jobs at year's end are already looking for work elsewhere. 

"Running the mill might be a problem, because we're losing all the help," he said. 

Imperial, the state's only sugar beet processor, owns four California plants and markets its products under a variety of brands, including Spreckels, Holly and Dixie Crystals. 

In an earnings report last week, the company noted it is being squeezed on prices for both refined and raw imported sugar, which stand at 15-year lows. It has instituted a cost-savings program, which includes streamlining its production and offering to sell the Tracy and Woodland plants to growers. 

But because no deal has been made, "the company intends to cease processing sugar beets in those facilities at the end of calendar 2000," Imperial's May 12 statement said. However, it added, "These factories will continue to package and distribute refined sugar products" using sugar produced at Imperial's remaining processing facilities.  Also, the statement said the company would sell the land surrounding the plants.  

The 83-year-old Tracy facility, long known as Holly Sugar, sits on about 1,400 acres. Earlier this year, Bruce Willmette, principal with Bambas and Willmette, a Stockton real estate appraisal firm, said that as agricultural land in a flood plain, the property is worth $4,000 to $5,000 an acre, or $5.6 million to $7 million.   The Tracy plant employs 140 year-round and 220 seasonal workers. It is not known how many workers would remain should the plant be restricted only to packaging and distribution. An Imperial Sugar spokesman Friday said that information was not immediately available. In the three months ended March 31, Imperial reported a net loss of $5 million, or 16 cents a share, much improved from an $18.6 million loss in the same period of 1999. 

For months, Imperial's stock has been under pressure. Friday, it closed at 1.433/4, down 0.061/4, near its 52-week low of 1.25 and off sharply from its 52-week high of 7.37.