| GILCREST, Colo. (AP) - Low prices for sugar beets are
helping farmers take over Western Sugar Co. "It's because the price
is so bad that we have a chance to buy the company," said farmer
Frank Eckhardt. "If the price of sugar were high, there's no way we'd
have that opportunity."
Early last week, a farmer-owned sugar beet cooperative formed earlier
this year reached a preliminary agreement to buy Western Sugar from Tate
& Lyle North American Sugars.
Western contracts and processes beets in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming
and Montana. It operates factories in Greeley and Fort Morgan as well as
four others.
"We need beets and this is the best chance we've got to keep them
maybe the only chance," said farmer Robin Peppler."
So growers will harvest this year's crop and hope they can grow and
market their own sugar next year.
Kevin Vollmer, Colorado agriculture manager for Western Sugar, said
harvest weather has been about perfect, but that's about the only time the
weather has cooperated this year.
"This year was just not a good year to try to grow sugar beets
along the Front Range," Vollmer said.
In the Greeley factory district alone, 7,200 acres of beets had to be
replanted after a dry spring and a May freeze. But then hard rains damaged
the replanted beets and about 6,800 of those acres had to be taken out,
with that ground going into other crops.
Kent Wimmer, who heads Western Sugar operations from Scottsbluff, Neb.,
said 62,000 acres of beets were contracted by the company in Colorado this
year. Traditionally, about half or a little less are grown in Weld County.
Western contracts between 170,000 and 180,000 acres of beets in the four
states.
He said 12,785 acres were lost this year in Colorado because of weather
conditions while another 5,539 acres went to the federal government's
Payment In Kind program designed to reduce the amount of sugar in the
country. Farmers were paid, up to a maximum of $20,000, to destroy a
portion of this year's crop. They were paid 71 percent of their three-year
average while 29 percent went to Western Sugar.
"That was a pretty good deal for farmers in the Greeley district
because they've had three pretty good years prior to this year,"
Wimmer said. |