Sugar beet harvest looks promising in Alberta, Canada

The sugar beet fields are a little green for the beginning of October and the summer heat saw water allocations maxed out on irrigated crops, but this year’s harvest in southern Alberta looks solid. “The sugar (content) is not as good, but yields are very good,” said Gary Tokariuk, president of the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers, during the organization’s open house tour earlier this month. The previous two harvests were plagued by sudden shifts in weather including early frosts and snowfall. But overall, the last decade has been good for the Alberta crop with the Lantic Taber Beet Factory taking all it can get from local growers who are likely to produce 35 to 40 tonnes an acre this year, according to Tokariuk. It was a slow start to the year, however, with a late-May snowfall blanketing the sugar beet heartland running from Bow Island to Lethbridge. After getting about 150 millimetres of precipitation early in the year, the heat kicked in, “and then we didn’t see any rain after ...