VAUXHALL, Alta. – John DeVries once grew sugar beets on rented land where a Wal-Mart now sits within sight of the Rogers Sugar plant in Taber, Alta.
The crop is largely grown for domestic markets, so it concerns DeVries that the same Wal-Mart does not stock the sugar from beets he sells to the local processor.
Also unsettling to the Vauxhall grower and pig farmer is the prospect of more Wal-Mart superstores on the Alberta horizon coupled with improved grain prices luring more producers away from sugar beets.
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“It’s a little scary when not enough want to grow them,” he said, citing the Rogers plant’s need to maintain a certain processing level to be viable.
He said more innovation with emphasis on quality and efficiencies will be required to overcome the beet crop’s challenges and maintain market share.
DeVries said it’s getting harder for farmers to consider all the options and pick the best one because it depends on a context that is constantly changing.
“Everybody is chasing the puck and it’s hard to know where the puck will be,” DeVries said.
Just back from buying another tractor at an auction this cool spring day, he looked ahead to another farming season set to begin within weeks.
Sugar beets have long been “the envy of the ag industry,” he said.
The cash crop, coupled with many good years producing pigs, provided DeVries, a native of Holland, with a good life in Canada.
In mid-March, Rogers Sugar negotiated new contracts with growers, but DeVries was hoping for a better price.
“We will have to grow more per acre to have the same bottom line this year,” he said of the 210 acres of beets he will plant.
The price for sugar beets has not increased at the same rate as rising inputs, but producers have been able to keep ahead of inputs with increased tonnage.
Bruce Webster, Alberta Sugar Beet Growers general manager, said sugar beet prices will rise to $312 per tonne of sugar extracted from beets this year compared to last year’s $306.
Rogers Sugar contracted for 25,000 acres, down from 34,302 last year and 37,537 in 2006.
The marketing group represents 250 southern Alberta irrigated farmers. Sugar beets are also grown in Ontario, the American Red River Valley and increasingly in Central and South America.
Webster said ideal growing conditions in recent years produced strong crops and led to record beet tonnage and inventories for Rogers.
Those healthy inventories made for tough negotiations this year, said Webster.
“There was not a huge incentive to offer that much more money this year.”
DeVries, who credits improved crop varieties with helping growers achieve good crops, looks forward to the delivery of Roundup Ready varieties and their benefits in better weed control in the coming years.
Beets that were once hand hoed are now top sprayed and mechanical cultivators keeping weeds down between rows until the plants fill in the fields in July.
Crop rotations among beets, barley, wheat and dry beans also keep the fields healthy.
DeVries said sugar beet growers benefit from the individualized attention given by experts like agrologist Gerhard Wall of Rogers Sugar.
On March 28, Wall had just received delivery of seed to be distributed to growers. He is also responsible for transferring the latest research and development to producers and offering recommendations on fertilizer rates and weed control.
He said this year’s crop will be going into dry ground unless some April rains help it get off to a good start. Irrigation is a must for the shallow rooted crop that generally gets planted in mid April when the risks of frost are lower, Wall said.
About 35,000 plants per acre are planted on 22-inch rows, set about six inches apart and planted no more than 1.5 inches deep.
The province’s isolation from other beet production areas is a plus for insect and disease control, he said, citing southern Alberta as the northernmost area where sugar beets are grown.
Its four-year rotation cycle also helps contain any disease challenges.
Insects like wireworms and maggots are more of a problem where sugar beet production is concentrated such as in the American Dakotas.
Wall said most growers plant close to the time that irrigation waters will be available.
“We depend on irrigation to get proper stand establishment,” said Wall, who expected heavy snowfall in the mountains would supply plenty of irrigation water this year.
DeVries said Rogers Sugar and the sugar beet industry have been an important and positive factor in the development of irrigated agriculture in southern Alberta. The Taber beet refinery was built in 1950 and underwent a $100 million upgrade in 1998, making it possible to process up to one million tonnes of sugar beets annually.
Beets are a regulated crop, with Rogers deciding how many acres it wants grown and the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers distributing quotas among its members.
Webster pointed to diversified market opportunities for sugar beets, including non-food products using beet extracts.
Flexible Solutions in Taber, a biorefinery, will turn Rogers sugar juices into aspartic acid for use in industrial products in energy and water conservation.
“It’s a hopeful point for us that we can diversify out of food markets,” he said.
DeVries has mixed feelings about the hype surrounding the non-food purposes.
“It’s like the release of a foreign species into the ecosystem,” he said. “There will be many casualties and I hope it won’t be the sugar industry.
“The sky is blue but there’s some black clouds on the horizon,” DeVries said.
For him, those clouds include an uncertain future for his 125-sow farrow-to-finish operation, which he expects to phase out this year.
He’s been forced out after 30 years due to losses as high as $50 per pig. He cited high labour and feed costs and an expanded industry in the United States fed by cheap corn and subsidies.
“We were a low cost producer and we’ve become a high cost producer,” DeVries said.
