The trucks are coming, but the drought that gripped mid-Michigan this summer has forced Monitor Sugar Co. to push back the start of the sugar beet campaign.

Monitor Sugar originally had hoped to begin receiving beets on Sept. 20, but the start date has been moved to Sept. 26 so beets can capitalize on the rain that fell in late August, farmers and company officials say.

"We could use about an inch of rain every week to 10 days for the next four or five weeks and some sunny days with temperatures in the high 70s," said Ray VanDriessche of Portsmouth Township, president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association. "In those conditions, the beets could put on up to one ton per acre each week.

"The sugar beets really haven't been impacted as much as other crops this year, but there were five or six weeks when they just didn't grow at all," said VanDriessche, who grows 250 acres of sugar beets. "We know we'll have a drop in tonnage, but nowhere near the other crops."

Michigan Farm Bureau analysts predict that yields for corn, soybeans and dry beans could be off by as much as 60 percent this year.

Paul Pfenninger, Monitor Sugar vice president, said officials predicted a bumper crop before the drought hit. Now, the company expects yields and sugar content to be at normal levels.

"The average temperature for the first 10 days of August was 93 degrees and that just sucked the growth right out of the beets. ... Now, we're expecting to be right around our five-year average," Pfenninger said.

The five-year average is 17.23 tons per acre with a sugar content - the percentage of sugar in each beet - of 17.93 percent.

Monitor Sugar will start receiving beets on Sept. 26, with slicing to begin the following day at the company's plant located at 2600 S. Euclid Ave.

"It's like a ritual in these parts," said Pfenninger. "When the trucks start showing up on the roads, everyone talks about it."

The company has already begun its annual search for about 530 seasonal employees to work during this year's sugar beet campaign, which is expected to run until late February.

- Rob Clark is business editor for The Times. He can be reached at 894-9642.