Griff: Early Sugar Beet Harvest Looks Good

While weeks remain on the 2021 sugar beet harvest, Brad Griff, Executive Director of the Idaho Sugarbeet Growers Association, said this year’s harvest is off to a good start. He said that’s welcomed news since 2021 started off with some challenges, thanks to strong winds and cold temperatures, making it hard to get the crop established.

“And then we experienced record heat and we weren’t sure how that would impact the crop.  But despite the relentless heat this summer, the beats grew well through June, July, and August.  While we still have a full month of harvest still ahead of us, with October, we anticipate a good crop.”

Griff said hopefully this mild, sunny weather will continue during much of October, allowing sugars to continue to develop in the beets. He added after the struggles many Idaho commodities had in 2021, it’s nice that sugar beets can be a positive for many growers and communities.

“We’ve already heard that grains are down, in terms of barley, wheat, really across the board potatoes are suffering.  And sugar beets are one of those few crops that did well in response to the extreme heat we saw this year.  So for our farmers we hope that sugar beets can help offset some of those decrease yields that they are experiencing from the other crops that they grow.”

Griff says at this point 15% of the sugar beet harvest is complete.

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