| RUPERT -- Rupert farmer Greg Cameron got his sugar beets out
of the ground just in the nick of time.
"We barely made it. In fact, we had to pull our trucks (out of
mud) that last day," he said.
Cameron finished up a 6 p.m. The day was Nov. 8 -- a day starkly
imprinted in the memories of southern Idaho sugar beet growers. Not only
did the country not have a president but an inopportune snowstorm also
signaled trouble for more than a handful of growers.
Soon, the word "hundreds" began to take on different
meanings. For two men sweating over a presidency, it meant missing out by
a "few." But for some farmers in Idaho, hundreds meant
sacrificing large fields of some of the finest sugar beets they'd ever
grown. Different perspectives, to be sure, but in both instances
catastrophe loomed in the offing.
An unseasonable deep freeze settled over Magic Valley for over two
weeks, with temperatures dropping as low as 8 degrees on Nov. 18.
"By the 11th we thought this is so bad, this might be it,"
said Amalgamated's ag manager in Twin Falls, Leonard Kerbs. "It just
got colder and colder and colder."
But how did farmers get themselves into this kind of a bind, when
conventional wisdom has it that beets should be dug between Oct. 15 and
31?
Kerbs said rainy weather at regular intervals during the month of
October often slowed harvest. John Schorr, ag manager at the Paul plant,
also pointed out that many of the farmers caught with beets still in the
field were so busy digging potatoes in a heavy production year that they
had less time than usual to get to their beets.
But unlike a presidential election that seems to have no happy ending,
as of last Monday worried farmers were back in the fields with a good
chance for a decent harvest.
In Twin Falls County, a little over 900 acres are being dug, and Kerbs
said the plant is handling them as fast as farmers can bring them in. He
said the beets looked like they were thawing out slowly, which means that
little if any damage had occurred.
"A sample showed the sugar content to be about 17.5, with apparent
purity to be 90-plus percent," he said. "That means the beets in
the field haven't changed."
Still, December weather presents a threat, with low night temperatures
and precipitation a constant worry. Six hours on a good day might be all a
farmer can expect to be in the field, Kerbs said.
Farmers delivering to the Paul plant run into one more restriction: a
quota system. Because over 4,400 acres need to be dug, Schorr has been
forced to impose quotas so beets can be processed immediately.
"We can only process so beets at a time," he said. Because
these last beets have been frozen, Amalgamated officials don't pile them
outside for more than one day. The exposure could cause rapid
deterioration, Schorr said.
"I'm hoping there will be zero loss," Schorr said.
"These growers need to have their beets out as much as anyone
else." |