| (Taken from Ag-Week 03/26/01) TWIN FALLS, Idaho --
Evidently, it just never was meant to be.
A winter that landed hard and fast the first week of
November and departed just as suddenly the last week of
February kept some 78,000 tons of beets from being harvested.
"I don't ever remember a winter that set up so hard
and just stayed that way," says Del Traveller,
Amalgamated Sugar Co.'s assistant to the vice president in
Twin Falls, Idaho. Traveller is noted as somewhat of a company
historian and he says he's sure there never have been so many
beets left in the field.
"There have been some here and there before, but it
froze on a larger scale this year," he says.
He attributes much of that to the strange weather that
preceded the freeze. First, a rainy October put farmers behind
in their potato harvest, which delayed beet harvest. But
anticipating they could rapidly clean up the beets with modern
equipment, few panicked as they watched their window of
opportunity closing.
Fast thaw
Besides, Idaho's climate seemed to have altered.
"This year came on the heels of two of the nicest
falls on record, where we could probably have harvested up
until mid-December," Traveller added.
Even after a hard freeze hit Nov. 8, farmers remained
hopeful. There had been years when frost locked up the beets,
but an early winter thaw permitted late harvests.
Not this year. No thaw occurred until about Feb. 26, and
when it did, it was fast with weather reaching into the high
40s and low 50s; coincidentally, at the same time the Twin
Falls plant suffered through a four-day breakdown -- another
record.
Twin Falls ag manager Leonard Kerbs says in his 20 years at
the Twin Falls plant, he never has seen the plant down that
long. But he points out that no one will ever know for sure
whether the 300 acres of Twin Falls district beets thawing at
that time could have been salvaged.
"I don't know whether during that four days they would
have been deemed not suitable for the manufacturing of sugar
from a visual standpoint as well as a quality measurement
standpoint compared to the measurements and how they looked
the prior week," Kerbs says.
Beets destroyed
And about $3 million' worth of MiniCassia beets, which had
been frozen even more deeply than those to the west, also
rapidly disintegrated once spring hit, John Schorr says.
An apparent purity of 80 percent and sugar content of 14
percent is the lowest point for salvaging sugar beets, Kerbs
says.
In mid-February frozen beets still were running in the
mid-80s for purity and the low 16s for sugar content.
March 7, citing abnormal fall and winter weather that
destroyed a significant portion of the beet crop, Idaho Gov.
Dirk Kempthorne rushed a second request to U.S. Agriculture
Secretary Ann Veneman to declare an agricultural emergency.
The first was made in December for MiniCassia, and the second
was to cover losses in Twin Falls County. |