"The crop is progressing fairly normally, and anticipation of a good crop is still there at this point,'' said Dr. Jimmy Widner, vice president of agriculture for Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative of Renville. "We've had cooler, wet weather, and the beet, like any crop, doesn't respond very well to those conditions, unless it's a cool weather crop.''

"But with a little sunshine, the beets are changing daily. We have a lot of optimism about this crop and the prospects. The growers should be pleased about the job that they've got accomplished to date,'' said Widner.

Growers planted about 116,400 acres, down about 3 percent from last year. Planting was completed around the middle of May, which was several weeks later than the planting date of the past three years. The last three years were exceptional, however, for favorable conditions that let farmers finish planting by the first of May.

This year, planting activity picked up between the first and 15th of May, "so that we were close to 99 percent planted by the middle of May, and that puts us right back on average,'' said Widner.

"I think we became accustomed to just saying, 'Well, we can be 100 percent planted by the first of May, and that was not normal. We had everything working for us those three years. This year is more typical of planting seasons - completed by the middle to the 20th of May,'' he said.

Since then, the crop has lacked sunshine and has struggled through cool, wet weather. The next indicator of progress will probably be around the first week of July when foliage begins covering the spaces between the rows.

"That's a fairly good indicator of relative maturity, and I would guess this year we're going to be more typical with only a percentage of the crop with row closure rather than 100 percent by the end of June like we've had the last three years,'' said Widner.

The earlier seasons had growers thinking about controlling leaf spot by the end of June because the canopy had been fully developed and conditions for disease development occurred.

"We won't have conditions favorable for infection this year until later into July,'' said Widner. "But it just says that the crop was probably later than the last three years in getting established.''

Growers have received approval for the second consecutive year to use a fungicide to fight a tough strain of leaf spot, and they've received approval this year to use a new herbicide to battle late-emerging weeds.

Widner expects harvest will probably begin around the 15th or 20th of September rather than the first of September because the crop is slightly smaller and a little bit later in development.

Growers do not want a repeat of freezing temperatures that damaged a significant portion of last year's crop, however. It was the worst such event in the co-op's 27 years.

The extended freeze occurred from Oct. 6 through 9 while many beets were still in the ground. By all indications, it appeared the beets went through a healing process, said Widner, but the damage that was done inten-sified during storage.

"We lost a significant number of tons after they were put into storage because of the freeze,'' said Widner.

"I don't know that you can plant for a disaster. It's going to happen occasionally and we have considered some operating procedures that perhaps could minimize the effects of some of those real extreme conditions,'' he said.