American Crystal Sugar Company began the pre-piling phase of processing Sugarbeets a few weeks ago and are gearing up for the stockpile harvest. Their factories in Northwest Minnesota are preparing to begin the stockpile harvest phase around October 1.
Eric Ptacek is the Agronomy Manager for the American Crystal Sugar’s Crookston and East Grand Forks Districts. He started in the Hillsboro North Dakota District and has been in his Agronomy Manager position since July 2019 and said the pre-pile harvest is going well. “Things have been going very well since we’ve gotten started,” said Ptacek. “The digging conditions have been good. As far as hiccups go, we have run into some heat. Sugarbeets are perishable, so too much heat this fall could create some problems for our piles, but overall, it’s been excellent.”
October 1 is the set date for the stockpile harvest to start at all the factories, and this can change by a day or two depending on weather and other factors. As of now, all the factories will continue to have enough inventory to stay up and running and keep producing sugar until the stockpiling begins.
Once the stockpiling harvest begins, the factories will be operating around the clock. Ptacek discussed what the process will look like as they began harvesting and storing the crops. “When we start stockpile harvest, we are trying to harvest the entire crop, under the right harvest parameters,” said Ptacek. “We want to store them so that we can process them through winter and into spring until we’re finished. So, we intend to have somewhere around 12 million tons of Sugarbeets to process and store once we begin the stockpile harvest.”
Ptacek also talked about the sugar content they’ve been seeing so far this year and says it’s consistent with an average year. “You know when we first started, the sugar content was higher than normal for this time of year,” said Ptacek. “We’ve had a dry summer. Most recently, we’ve had anywhere from two to five inches of rain the past few weeks, which has been beneficial. Our sugar content starts to creep downward now that we’ve started and with the conditions, so I would say we’re probably about average compared to a normal year.”
During the Stockpile Harvest phase, Ptacek says that anywhere from 10 to 12 thousand tons of Sugarbeets will come to the Crookston facility alone on a normal day. It is a great reminder to everyone to stay safe on the roads this fall as harvesting begins.
We will be checking back in with Ptacek at the beginning of October to update how the Stockpile harvest is going.
