The U.S. Department of Agriculture is urging grower-shareholders -- especially those in wet areas -- to plant their beets if they possibly can.

"If a field can be planted, it must be planted, or they have not fulfilled the contract they have with the company," said David Berg, vice president of agriculture at the cooperative's headquarters in Moorhead.

Wednesday, the Crystal board in an unprecedented move, instituted what it is calling an "acre shift" program. Crystal is asking all growers, especially those in drier areas where planting is possible, to let the company know by 11 a.m. today whether they can plant extra acres.

Berg said a reduction of beet acreage much below the 500,000-acre level would reduce the efficiency of its plants.

Slow going

Shareholders have had tough going to get their beets planted this year. Progress across the company Thursday averaged 70 percent planted, with 351,000 acres of beets in the ground. The past two years, the company was 100 percent planted by this date. The five-year average is more than 90 percent at this date.

Initially, farmers were plagued by frost, which had penetrated the soil deeper than in normal years, Berg said. After the frost, spotty rains confounded planting in some of the wettest areas.

Areas with the worst problems are in northwest Minnesota, in the Argyle, Stephen, Hallock and Kennedy areas. Other tough spots are west of Hillsboro, N.D., and in the Reynolds, N.D., area, as well as areas north of Hatton, N.D. Casselton, N.D., has been behind, but is catching up. By factory districts, Crookston and Moorhead are standing at 90 percent planted. Hillsboro is at 75 percent; East Grand Forks at 60 percent; and Drayton, N.D., at 50 percent.

Fixed costs

Crystal officials have calculated that about 25,000 acres of the 500,000 target may go unplanted.

"Under our contract, shareholders are required to make all reasonable efforts to plant the crop," Berg said. His staff is expecting growers to be aggressive in making all reasonable efforts.

Even if growers are allowed to collect crop insurance benefits for fields too wet to plant, Berg said they still might be liable to pick up their share of the co-op's fixed costs.

It could mean tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on how many acres a shareholder owns. Berg declined to specify a per-acre amount.

Shareholder contracts say the grower and the co-op will mutually decide whether a field is fit to plant.

In April, the board passed a new procedure requiring shareholders to contact the company agriculturist before May 25 if they think there are fields that may not be planted.

"We've never had a policy like this before," Berg said. "The reason for it is that we were wetter going into the spring and the levels of crop insurance available have upped the ante a little bit."

And then there's the acre shift program.

Acreage shift

"Under the new policy, shareholders who are in parts of the valley where they think they can get some more acres planted will notify the company that they can plant more there," Berg said.

Since Wednesday, the phone has been ringing off the hook. Interest has been favorable in the Drayton district in North Dakota and in areas of the Moorhead district.

Crystal will electronically notify growers by 2 p.m. today if they can plant the extra acres. If there are more than 25,000 acres offered, the number of acres a grower plants will be prorated. "Depending on what gets planted between now and next Tuesday, we may put another round in place with this acre shift," Berg said.

Berg says the reason the company can't over-plant the 500,000 acre target is that USDA requires that companies not increase acreage in order to qualify for its 2001 payment-in-kind program. Last year, the PIK program paid farmers to destroy healthy beets to reduce an oversupply that caused 20-year sugar price lows and forfeiture of sugar to the government to satisfy commodity loans.

"We're saying we're not going to go over last year's planted acreage as a company," Berg said. "If weather gets just wonderful for the next week and we find out that acres we thought might not get planted do get planted, we've put in a provision where we'll pay producers to destroy any (added acreage shift) marginal acres we've planted, above the 500,000," Berg said.