"We are very pleased to get this much support from area growers," said Dick Leach, vice-president of the Great Lakes Sugar Beet Growers.

"We still want acres and we will accept more until we get 125,000 acres," Leach said. "Then we will be assured of enough crop to keep all four plants operating to their capacity."

He said the cooperative board is soliciting for those final acres during the next few months. Once the limit is reached, membership in the cooperative will be closed. That means farmers that delay too long may be left on the outside and prohibited from growing sugar beets as a cash crop for this cooperative.

Leach said he is confident that the additional acres will be found.

"A lot of farmers in the Caro and Saginaw area were holding back until they were sure we were going ahead with this," he said. "Now that the word is out, we are getting a lot of calls."

A proposed agriculture bill before the Michigan Legislature offers the cooperative a $5 million zero-interest Department of Agriculture loan to help purchase the plants and get the operation off the ground. Leach said this bill, if it wins approval as written, will go a long way to help assure the cooperative's success.

The cooperative board gambled last winter that it could get enough growers to sign up when it signed a purchase agreement with Imperial Sugar Co. to buy the four Michigan Sugar Co. plants in the Thumb Area at a cost of $83.5 million.

The purchase and plan by the cooperative to operate the plants and sell their own sugar became necessary after the financially strapped Texas based sugar company filed for reorganization under the federal bankruptcy act. Imperial announced that its sugar beet operations in Michigan would be closed.

The trick is that buying into the cooperative is costly. Growers are asked to make an advance payment of $200 for every acre they want to commit to sugar beets. And the deadline for payment is August 1.

For now, however, the signup fee is $50 an acre. Farmers have the next two months to raise the rest of the money, or secure bank loans.

Area beet growers did not have to belong to the cooperative to sell beets in 2001.

There are 115,000 acres of beets in the ground and committed to this year's campaign, which Leach says is more than enough to meet the initial cost of buying the company's assets from Imperial Sugar.

Under terms of the letter of intent, growers have until Sept. 1 to work out terms of the acquisition of the capital stock of the company.