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Freeze puts beet harvest at risk

"All the growers now have to basically hire Holly Sugar to process their remaining beets. Because these beets are damaged, Holly doesn't have to buy them. Instead, they get paid a fee to process them and the grower takes all the risk."

Four days of unseasonably cold weather last week brought a hard frost to the valley, interrupting sugarbeet harvest and forcing growers to rework their contracts.

"This is the worst case of a harvest freeze since at least 1971," said Russ Fullmer, ag manager at Holly Sugar. "The bad thing is harvest is only 38 percent complete. In 1971, there were a lot fewer beets left in the ground."

The driving winds Wednesday drove wind chills to zero, freezing the beet tops, followed by three more cold days, leaving the beets frozen in the ground.

"The big question is how will these beets store, and how will they process," Fullmer said. "We're talking about three-fifths of the beets. There's a huge amount of dollars invested in those beets."

Harvest halted over the weekend as growers waited for beets to thaw and hopefully heal.

According to Don Steinbeisser, president of the Montana-Dakota Beet Growers Association, for the frozen beets to heal, the valley will need warm, dry weather for the remainder of harvest. Another frost would be devastating.

"We need to approach this optimistically. We can't panic," Steinbeisser said.

Once beets are piled, the weather, ideally, would cool down considerably and avoid significant precipitation. "We need Mother Nature to cooperate," Steinbeisser said. "We might get out of this situation OK."

Terry Cayko is a sugarbeet grower who's been working with Steinbeisser during discussions with Holly Sugar officials. He said harvest could begin on a limited basis as early as Wednesday. "By the weekend, we should be going at full force again," Cayko said.

Steinbeisser called a growers meeting for Tuesday at 10 a.m. at the Moose Lodge in Sidney to explain the financial effects of the freeze. He anticipates growers will need to sign recovery contracts with Holly Sugar for the remaining beets, assuming all of the risk for the rest of the harvest.

Steinbeisser called the new arrangement "tolling the beets."

"All the growers now have to basically hire Holly Sugar to process their remaining beets," Steinbeisser said. "Because these beets are damaged, Holly doesn't have to buy them. Instead, they get paid a fee to process them and the grower takes all the risk."

Cayko said many questions about the new contracts concern growers. For example, growers will need to know when and what they will get paid for the remaining beets. Liability insurance is another issue that needs to be discussed.

"This type of freeze so early into harvest is unprecedented," Cayko said, "and growers have had very little time to adjust to this. There's definitely going to be a lot of questions."

Cayko said that area bankers were invited to the growers meeting to learn about the effects of the harvest freeze. One problem concerns the 80 percent payments that growers expect in late November. This year the payments will only apply to roughly two-fifths of the beets.

"We rely on that November payment to pay our production costs," said Cayko, "but this year it will probably be lower than usual."

Despite the deep concern, Steinbeisser and Cayko agree that the harvest can still be successful. "We need to defoliate deeper and deliver very clean beets," Cayko said.

According to Cayko, the freeze was widespread, covering the entire growing area. "Because it lasted four days, the whole area froze," Cayko said. "The only area that didn't freeze quite as badly was the Powder River area."

Steinbeisser said the full affects of the freeze won't be known until at least the end of January.

"The freeze is a shame because this harvest looked to be excellent," Steinbeisser said.