Drought and sugar beets

The ongoing drought, extending in Idaho which is certainly sugar beet country, has some implications for sugarbeet growers. Agronomy manager for the Drayton factory district of American Crystal Sugar, Justin Kreig, talks about how the dry conditions have impacted the sugarbeet crop.

Well, it's been extremely dry. We're really in need of rain. We really don't have any reserve in the soil. The water table readings early for May showed no excess water in the soil at that time. So it's been a struggle and we're surprised to see how good the beet crop is looking right now. It's variable, highly variable stands are variable. We like to see stands in the 200 to 220 beets per 100 feet or so, and they're averaging more like 150 this year. But there's areas where there's far less than that and there's areas where there's more than that. Krieg fills us in on insects and weeds that beet growers need to watch for. We haven't seen any other real issues with insects. Aside from the sugar beet root maggots in the sugar beet, we make it fly. And as far as weed control goes, our biggest enemy that we're coming up against is roundup resistant water hemp that's finally made its way up here and in significant populations. Again, that's Justin Craig, who is an agronomy manager with American Crystal Sugar.