40 tons per acre | Wet, cool weather favoured sugar beets in Ontario, but other crops may see issues
CHATHAM, Ont. — Ontario farmers generally believe that it’s better to be hot and dry than cool and wet, but there is at least one notable exception this year.
Sugar beet growers are looking forward to what could prove to be a record yield, thanks to the cool and wet summer.
“Right now, guys are pumping out 40 tons per acre. There were some yields even higher than that, and that was a couple weeks ago,” said Glenn Jack, past-chair of the Ontario Sugarbeet Growers Association.
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“We started the harvest on Aug. 28 because it was such a huge crop coming on. No one anticipated this because of the late spring planting. Now it looks like a record.”
Jack is among 100 farmers in southwestern Ontario who together grow 10,000 acres of sugar beets for the Michigan Sugar Company, a co-operative with processing plants in Michigan. The past record for the co-op was just shy of 30 tons per acre.
“There are 800,000 tons of beets harvested already and they’re expecting 4.7 million tons in total,” Jack said.
Prices are down from previous highs, although Jack said restrictions on Mexican imports into the United States have helped, perhaps by five cents per pound.
The Bloomberg financial website reports that world sugar prices have dropped 50 percent from a 30-year high in 2011.
Meanwhile, the production outlook for corn, soybeans, apples and processing tomatoes in the province is mixed.
The processing tomato harvest was expected to wrap up by last week, and there were hopes for a bumper crop. However, expectations were tempered by bacterial disease pressure, said John Mumford, general manager of Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers.
Mumford said most processing tomato growers are expected to meet or come close to meeting their contracted tonnage.
“We’re about a week away (from finishing the harvest),” he said last week.
“I think, by and large, anything compared to what happened last year is good.”
Excessive rainfall in the spring of 2013 reduced yield expectations, and some fields were written off.
Mumford said the processing sweet corn harvest has been delayed, as has the harvest of several other crops.
Horst Bohner, a field crop specialist with Ontario’s agriculture ministry, said early soybean yields have been promising. At three million acres, it’s the largest crop in the province.
“Yields have so far been good to very good,” he said.
“I’ve heard as low as 42 bushels per acre and as high as 85 near Chatham. It looks more promising than it did a month ago. There was a little of white mold, but they say white mold is a sign of stronger yields.”
It remains to be seen how well later seeded soybeans will fare, but farmers can expect at least average yields.
Corn is Ontario’s second largest crop at close to two million acres. Damage was sustained Sept. 18 when temperatures reached -2 C east of Toronto, Bohner said.
The crop has reached or is near physiological maturity in the rest of the province, thanks to warm temperatures and sunny skies through the last half of September and into early October.
“There’s no question about it. If you didn’t get hit by frost, the last two weeks have been a blessing,” Bohner said.
Apples, another significant fall crop in Ontario, are off to a slow start.
Charles Stevens, chair of the Ontario Apple Growers Association, said growers are delaying their harvest for a week to encourage higher sugar levels.
In an unusual twist, apples took on their reddish blush before the sugar content reached its peak.
“It takes cool nights to put on the colour. We had that in early September. It’s like throwing me into a snow bank. When I come out, my cheeks are red,” Stevens said.
“Now we need the sugar levels to come up. We want our apples to be marketed.”
There’s a similar story for Ontario’s grapes, Stevens said. Growers are leaving their grapes on the vines longer to increase brix levels.
He said the province’s apple production capacity has been slowing growing in the past few years after decades of decline.
Most growers are moving toward high-density plantations, he added. Initial costs are higher, but production per acre increases and annual production costs decrease.
