Sugar Crop Especially “Sweet” This Year

Sugar beet growers in northwest Wyoming produced an exceptionally sweet crop this year.
According to an article in the Powell Tribune, growers in this area not only produced a crop with the highest percentage sugar content in the history of the Lovell Factory District, but the sugar content here was the highest in the Western Sugar Cooperative’s entire four-state region.
Rodney Perry, Western Sugar’s chief executive officer at Denver, told the Tribune that this district’s average sugar content of slightly over 18 percent is the only growing area in the cooperative’s four states that will reach 18 percent sugar.
Perry says that as of last Friday, the co-op predicts a yield of 29 tons per acre and sugar content of slightly over 18 percent in Wyoming. The Montana sugar crop is bringing in a little over 30 tons per acre and just a little more than 17 percent sugar.
Perry says that the factory also performed better than last year, which helped with processing the beets; and a new sugar marketing relationship with Mexico sweetens the pot, as well, as it will carry on into the foreseeable future.