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HUDSON, Colo. (AP) - About 10 years ago,
a group of farmers was standing around a transfer station,
waiting for their sugar beets to be weighed when they decided
to call themselves ``The Unholy 13.''
The dubious nickname referred to the
state of the region's sugar beet industry, which had been
battling low prices. That's on top of the normal uncertainty
of weather and contract negotiations with the company that
turns the beet, the first crop in the ground and often the
last out each year, into sugar.
The decade-long struggle took its toll,
with the Unholy 13 dwindling to about six farmers, with some
retiring and others opting to grow other crops.
Earlier this year, London-based Tate
& Lyle, which owns Western Sugar Co., decided that profits
were too low and put the company and its six regional plants
up for sale, jeopardizing the growers' ability to process the
crop they had invested so much time and equipment into
growing.
Instead of giving up, farmers in
Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana decided the only hope
for them, and their neighbors who work in the plants, was to
band together and buy the company. They have formed a
cooperative, hoping to close on a $78 million deal to buy
Western Sugar, which has operated under that name and Great
Western Sugar for nearly 100 years.
Although Friday is the deadline, there is
some wiggle room since no other buyer has surfaced.
``The best time to buy into something is
when it looks the bleakest,'' said Thomas Bauer, a
third-generation beet farmer in Bayard, Neb., who had nearly
given up on growing beets. ``If you're going to advance in
life, there is risk involved.''
Joe Amen, an original member of the
Unholy 13 who raises sugar beets, barley, wheat and sunflowers
in this farming community about 40 miles northeast of Denver,
believes the farmers will gain some stability.
In the early 1900s, Great Western was a
company to be reckoned with in the region, with a seven-story
brick headquarters in downtown Denver complete with marble
stairs and at least one safe on every floor.
The 1906 Sugar Building was abandoned by
1982 but reopened last year after being renovated by the
Thomas and Perkins advertising agency. At least once a month
someone stops by to recall how they used to come with their
grandfather to bring beets to the building for processing,
agency spokeswoman Trisha Smith said.
They remember getting paid in cash for
the crop from one of the vaults, some of which are two stories
high. Some remember being told by their grandmothers to make
sure the money wasn't spent in one of the neighborhood bars,
Smith said.
Most Rocky Mountain beet farmers had no
other choice than to do business with Great Western, which
became Western Sugar when Tate & Lyle bought it in 1985
after a bankruptcy.
Beets are a relatively expensive crop to
grow, requiring farm workers to weed the fields by hand. But,
historically, they have been profitable for farmers because
the government's sugar policy has limited imports over the
years and sugar is a high value product. |