Sweet Beets

You may think most of the sugar you consume comes from sugar cane. That's not always the case. In fact, sugar beets are playing an increasingly important role in American agriculture. Michigan was an early pioneer in growing sugar beets and it's still one of the top five producers in the United States. And Michigan is where sugar beets are grown and turned into sweet products for your dinner table.

An unseasonably warm day sets the stage for an autumnal harvest of sugar beets a few miles south of Bay City, Michigan. Farmer, Wayne Hecht, readies himself for an intense few weeks on the job, "We start 7 O'clock in the morning and run 'til 11 O'clock at night, then get up next day do all over again---weather permitting."

This time of the year, the weather in this part of Michigan isn't always favorable. Two days of showers have turned this fertile field of sugar beets into a muddy mess. And the possibility of an early freeze could impact the harvest season. That all impacts Wayne Hecht's harvest, "As the fall continues, we are conscious of the fact that the day will come when our ground will freeze up and once that ground freezes we no longer can harvest our sugar beets --so we have to stay ahead of the weather."

Harvesting begins with a sugar beet defoliator. Farmers call it "getting the green off". Rubber flails on the defoliator spin at some 2000 revolutions per minute.

The flails knock the leaves off just ahead of the harvester and are mixed back into the soil to decompose. Then, a mechanical harvester lifts the beets up from the soil. The wheels are pitched at an angle so as they turn, they, literally, "pinch" the beets out of the ground.

Working six rows at a time, farmers can harvest 35-40 acres a day if they have enough help and trucks on site. The beets make their way to a cross conveyor that loads them directly onto a truck.

Hecht communicates with the driver of the truck to make sure their equipment is lined up. Working in tandem guarantees most of the beets will make it on board. As he says, "If we get it up out of the ground, it's going to end up on the truck."

A Sugar beet is a vegetable. Its root contains a high concentration of sucrose-better known as sugar. Hecht says a mature, healthy beet is about a foot long, weighs 3-5 pounds and is roughly made up of about 18 % sugar. Surprisingly, the smaller beets are sweeter. Michigan farmers have been harvesting sugar beets since the late 1800's. Each year, more than 2 thousand growers here will produce close to 3.5 million tons of beets.

To give you an idea of how many sugar beets are typically harvested, a semi trailer truck holds about 30 tons of beets. Normally three trucks are out on the field. Each one takes back 8 to10 loads.so if you do the math that ends up being anywhere from 700-800 tons of sugar beets in one day.

Once out of the ground, the beets are transported to one of several processing plants. Here, they'll be offloaded and stored outside in huge piles some 20-feet high and a thousand feet long. Michigan's cold winter weather helps keep the beets fresh. Michigan Sugar Company CEO Mark Flegenheimer says storage is important, "A sugar beet is a vegetable so it's alive and respiring so we need the cool temperature we enjoy here in Michigan to store them much like refrigeration." To assist in their preservation, fans blow cool air into the piles to get rid of any hotspots.

Mark Flegenheimer says this plant will move into full production in the fall and process the beets well into the following year... "Daily we make about 50,000 hundred-weight of sugar. Processing about 20,000 tons of beets each day-each 24 hours that we're operating." It takes a highly-mechanized, multi-step process to extract sugar from beets. The end product involves a little cooking and a little chemistry. The beets are washed and sliced into thin strips called cossettes. They are placed in a diffuser which uses hot water to extract the beet sugar into a liquid solution.

From there they start a purification process where they get impurities out and leave pure sucrose behind. A multi-stage evaporator takes out more water forming a thicker juice. Bits of sugar dust are added to initiate crystal formation. And then you have vessel full of crystals wrapped in a liquid which is molasses. Finally, a centrifuge separates the sugar crystals from the liquid. The final product is dried with hot air and packaged.

This hundred year old factory is the largest beet processing plant east of the Mississippi and one of the largest in the country Flegenheimer says, "About 70% of our product goes to what we call industrial customers. About 30% ends up in grocery stores. We make about a billion pounds of sugar each year; about 300 million dollars in revenue."

Five years ago more than 1200 local farmers purchased Michigan Sugar Company and turned it into a grower- owned cooperative. Farmer Gene Meylan says he supports this type of agricultural autonomy, "We were offered the opportunity to form a co-operative, buy the factories, produce our beets, sell our sugar and become owners of an industry that we could control from start to finish." Beet farmer Wayne Hecht says cooperatives like this help producers stay competitive and have a greater say in the entire process. "I still think it's the only way that we're going to succeed and remain in the business of growing sugar beets." Wayne Hecht is a third generation farmer whose family has worked this land since they emigrated from Germany. He considers it an honor to carry on the family tradition, "I had the privilege and pleasure to grow up on a farm. Quite frankly, it's all I knew for a while and I came to the realization that I like this."

The sugar beet market has seen ups and downs in recent years but growers hold out hope that the beet's possible use for ethanol production could promise a new future for fuel as well as food for American consumers.

Sweet Beet Statistics
Sugar beets are a One point two billion dollar crop in the United States and they grow in widely divergent areas of the country. The top five states for sugar beet production are Minnesota, North Dakota, Idaho, Michigan and California.