Sugar Beet Harvest 2008

Sugar beet harvest is over for another year... We had a lot of rain but we had three nice days to get them off. Here are a few pictures of the machine and the harvesting scene...

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This is the harvester from a bit of a distance.

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This is a view from the cab to the head of the machine.

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Here is the wagon coming up to receive the beets from the harvester.

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Front view of unloading...

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Rear view of unloading...

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Hauling the beets to the pile.

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Dumping the beets...

And the cycle continues...

Thanks for the pics, we grow red beets around here.

Are red beets grown for human consumption? or are they processed for something else?

(quoted from post at 21:04:04 11/07/08) Are red beets grown for human consumption? or are they processed for something else?

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like red beets fresh out of the can. Lot's of difference from sugar beets. David...........

Thanks for the interesting pics. What sort of yield/acre do beets make? Do many stay in the ground when the picker goes down the rows ?

If the machine is set up right for the conditions, it doesn't leave many behind. You spill more at unloading into the wagon. Per acre, in a good year (average) beets will do about 25 tonnes per acre. This year though we got closer to 30

Has the overall harvest been down? We use beet pulp shreds in our cattle and horse feed rations and they tell us that we will get half of what we got last year. I'd buy a semi load if I could find them.

As far as I know, the tonnage this year has been more than expected. I don't know why you would only get half of what you usually purchase.

Have you ever fed just the beets to the cattle? I have heard that they are an excellent feed source. I don't know how cost effective it would be though. This year the plant has been asking people to plow beets under because the plant has too many. If you were to talk to one of those farmers to buy the harvested beets or something....

I don't have any experience in using beets as a feed source... I was just reading articles...

When Fidel Castro took over Cuba and turned communist the US government stopped the importation of Cuban sugar and the exportation of food to Cuba. This area of NY used to grow a lot of red kidney beans and almost all went to Cuba so the embargo hurt farmers here bad. To compensate the feds spent millions to build a sugar beet plant in the area and to convert farmers to growing sugar beets even funding a sugar beet festival. What they didn't take into account is the round glacial stones in the soils that are....you guessed it...indistinguisable from sugar beets to a beet harvester. The soils here tended to cling to the beets I guess and a lot of topsoil ended up in the truck. We don't have a lot of topsoil so most farmers decided not to grow them and it all fizzled.

Thanks for the Pictures. We grow alot of Sugar Beets around here. Im in michigans thumb between two processing plants in Croswell and Caro.

Where are you located?

The machines we have today for doing beets are constantly knocking dirt off. However, stones are still a problem.

I'm about 20 miles out of the 'territory' but a lot of sugar beets are grown just north of me, and again up in the Red River area.

I understand it's been a difficult harvest, perhaps 25% are under snow now un in the Farg area?

--->Paul

I don't know about States side, but in Ontario, Canada we have had some beautiful weather for digging beets

We are in Cayuga County in the finger lakes region. The processing plant was located at Montezuma. At one time it was going to make ethanol from corn but I don't know if that ever got going or not.

Nice pictures.

Do you have a allocation amount of how much sugar you can grow in Canada???

Here in the states all sugar farmers cane/beet have a set allotment they can grow year to year to keep prices artificially set. If they have a bumper crop and over produce they have to store the sugar to the next year at their expense.

Our red beets our canned for human food. Yield for a good year are around 20 to 25 tons per acer.