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At the Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative, in Renville, piles of snow-covered sugar beets sit at the cooperative. The Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative will be discarding 450,000 tons of harvested beets, reported Alan Ritacco, president and chief executive officer. The cooperative had harvested an estimated 2.3 million tons of beets. Tribune photo by Bill Zimmer

RENVILLE -- Frost damage to the 2000 sugar beet crop has reached what was once a worst-case projection.

The Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative will be discarding 450,000 tons of harvested beets, reported Alan Ritacco, president and chief executive officer. The cooperative had harvested an estimated 2.3 million tons of beets.

The cooperative initially estimated it would have to discard between 250,000 to 450,000 tons of beets, depending on how extensive the frost damage proved to be.

The poor condition of the remaining beets led the cooperative to end its slicing of the 2000 crop Tuesday. Ritacco said it had become apparent that it was no longer economical to slice the damaged beets.

The cooperative will turn its attention to processing the large quantity of beet juice produced by this year's slicing operations.

The decision to end the slice will speed up the process of quantifying the losses caused by the frost. That information is needed by growers to submit federal crop insurance claims for the crop disaster that occurred.

Ritacco said the cooperative will be working as quickly as possible to determine the loss numbers and get the information to its producer members.

The producers are responsible for submitting their crop insurance claims based on their individual policies, he said.