Lovell area beet farmers were given another chance to sell some beets this week when the Western Sugar Cooperative announced they would accept another quota of beets from area farmers. With a quick flurry of activity after the quota began Monday at noon, farmers are again waiting on the weather and decisions from the cooperative to see if the harvest can continue.
Charles Hessenthaler was stacking his beets in piles on his land between Byron and Lovell last week, and this week he was happy to be permitted to dig and deliver another quota to Western Sugar.
“Every little bit helps,” Hessenthaler said. “There is still a lot of money left in those fields.”
The cooperative notified growers this weekend that they would accept another quota of 1.2 tons per contracted acre – about a week’s worth of processing at the factory.
Lovell-area farmer Bob Martens participated in this week’s quota. He was finished by Tuesday and said most of the other farmers seemed to be finishing up at the same time. Martens estimated he had harvested about 70 percent of his beets as of Tuesday.
Farmers are being told to be more aggressive with toppers, Martens said, to cut away the degraded top of the beets before sending them to the factory for processing.
“They will probably store a little longer without so much of that degraded top in there,” he said. “Underneath, they’re still quite healthy.”
Martens said WS agriculturists have continued to tour area farms, and have approved or disapproved certain fields based on their assessment of how well the beets in those fields would process and store in piles.
Martens said members of the Big Horn Basin Growers Association, Western Sugar Cooperative and co-op board members would meet probably on Friday to discuss the future and the possibility of another quota.
“We’ll see if beets are processing well and keeping well and maybe we’ll have another week,” Martens said. “If not, I think we’re getting pretty close to the end.”
He added that the weather in the next week or so is still a determining factor. Recently, the weather has been ok for beet health, and Martens said his one complaint about the current weather is the string of cold nights. The final winter freeze that could halt farmers from digging any more beets usually moves in around Thanksgiving, he said.
 The start-and-stop harvest has impacted many farmers, Western Sugar factory workers and truck drivers.
Craig Blasdall, who helps out part-time at Rodriguez Farms, said his normal beet harvest schedule is to work 12-hour days, seven days a week for three or four weeks, working hard to complete the entire haul in just a few weeks. With farmers being told that the best place to keep beets is in the ground, Blasdall said his work schedule is more sporadic this year.
Marvin Nelson works on one of the pilers at the Western Sugar factory that stacks the beets as trucks bring in load after load. The pilers were running full speed Monday and Tuesday with the latest quota being brought in, but Nelson agreed this season has been on a much different schedule. The harvest usually wraps up in about 25 days, he said, but this year it is going about twice as long with more days between working.
“It’s hit and miss,” he said. “The harvest has been tough on everybody.”
Waiting on disaster declaration
Bryan H. Schoenfelder, county executive director for the Big Horn County Farm Service Agency County Committee, said his office in Greybull is still waiting to hear if the disaster declaration request recently sent to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture was approved or not.
“Historically, it hasn’t been difficult to get as long as the circumstance warrants it,” he said.
If the disaster declaration for the county is approved (either in Big Horn County or in an adjacent county), farmers who experience sugar beet losses this year may be eligible for the Supplemental Revenue Assistance (SURE) program, which is part of the 2008 Farm Bill. The SURE program will potentially compensate producers for any losses they have had, Schoenfelder said, as long as every crop grown at their farm is either federally insured or insured by the Non-Insured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP), which provides insurance for uninsurable crops, he said.
Schoenfelder said farmers would be able to contact the Farm Service Agency office in the fall of 2010 to be compensated for 2009 losses. As long as they meet insurance requirements, farmers are eligible to receive compensation for 2008 losses because an adjacent county was granted a disaster declaration last year. Schoenfelder can be reached at 765-2663.
If the disaster declaration is granted, farmers will also be eligible for emergency loans, Schoenfelder said.