The Beet Goes On -- Suddenly, Sugar Makes Sense Again In Eastern Washington

MOSES LAKE, Grant County - After a 20-year hiatus, sugar beets are back.

The crop, a mainstay in the Columbia River Basin until the late 1970s, is being grown again in the rich, irrigated land around this eastern Washington city. It's providing a stable crop for growers and a boost to the local economy.

Not bad for what is essentially an ugly, foul-tasting vegetable. When mature, it is a dirty, tan-colored lump about the size of a football with hairy roots that shoot out from the bottom like tendrils from a sci-fi movie. While growing, it is a pleasant enough knee-high plant that old-timers say offers good coverage to wildlife such as pheasants.

Ugly or not, the beets are sweet to the 65 or so growers who have planted almost 30,000 acres this year. That's up from 12,000 last year and almost no acreage only three or four years ago. But it's still a long way from 1978 - the last full year of big beet production in the state - when more than 70,000 acres were harvested for sugar refineries here and in Toppenish.

"It's the first crop in and the last one out," says Bret Bergeson, who has 500 acres in beets on the family farm that he works with his father and brother outside of town. "And it is a good rotation crop for us."

Farmers alternate crops in the same ground over a four-year period to prevent the ground from being "burned out." Bergeson's rotation now will be beets, corn, potatoes, wheat and back to beets. Each crop takes different things from the soil and, with a crop like wheat, straw is left on the ground to be turned under when the soil is tilled. That adds nutrients back to the ground.

Beets are coming back at a good time for the Columbia Basin. With wheat prices headed toward 70-year lows, there is much interest in the beets. They not only serve the same purpose as wheat - crop rotation - but they're much more profitable.

As crops go, sugar beets also have the advantage of versatility. After harvest, the tops and little beets left in the field are excellent cattle feed. After processing, the leftover pulp is formed into pellets and again used as cattle feed. There is a good market for the pellets in Japan.

The effort to reintroduce beets into the Columbia Basin is meeting with success in part because it has been able to build on the former industry.

On the outskirts of town, six huge silos shimmer in the heat. The silos are left from the original Utah & Idaho (U&I) Sugar plant, closed in 1979 when U&I quit the sugar-beet business. A new $100 million plant is rising on the site, blending modern technology with salvageable buildings and equipment.

When it is up and running this fall, it will provide a strong economic lift to the region.

Marvin Price, the head of Columbia River Sugar, said the refinery should employ 75 to 100 full-time workers with about 300 seasonal workers to help process the crop. Even the seasonal workers will pad local coffers; processing occurs from October to February, a period when other seasonal farm jobs are few.

"The Columbia Basin may be one of the best places to grow sugar beets," Price said. "Average yield elsewhere like the Red River Valley (in North Dakota) may be 17 to 20 tons per acre. We can get 35 tons to the acre here." Soil, sun and ample water from the Columbia Basin irrigation systems make those yields possible.

The yields translate into profits for the growers and the renewal of a crop here.

`A political crop'

But part of that profitability comes from the fact that sugar is still supported by the U.S. government.

"Sugar is a political crop, not an economic one," said one agricultural expert who has watched the state farm industry for years.

It always has been cheaper to process sugar from sugar cane than beets. But an import quota and other assistance has helped prop up the price of beet sugar and make plants such as the one at Moses Lake feasible.

"If the price gets too low, the Commodity Credit Corp. turns off the spigot on imports and the price rises," Price said. "If the price gets too high, they open it up and allow more imports, and the price goes down."

Sugar beets have had protective tariffs almost from the beginning.

The sugar-beet industry was a byproduct of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. In 1806, Napoleon closed the European continent to trade with Britain, cutting Europe off from West Indian sugar and creating an acute sugar shortage.

Scientists had long been developing the process of making sugar from beets, and a pilot beet-sugar refinery had been built in Poland in 1802. But the process was not yet a commercial success. The wartime sugar shortage stimulated research and, in 1808, Benjamin Delessart, a French scientist, developed a charcoal clarification process that made sugar-beet refining practical.

In 1811, Napoleon established the world's first beet-sugar industry by setting aside 80,000 acres for beet production, directing construction of 10 refineries and establishing six schools to teach the new technology. He also established the first subsidy, a bounty paid to peasants to grow sugar beets. By 1814, there were 40 refineries operating in France, Belgium, Germany and Austria.

Sugar beets were grown in the U.S. by the 1870s and first grown in Washington state in 1889. Beets gradually became a major crop here, until the 1970s, when sugar-beet prices became extremely volatile after price-support programs were lifted. Prices rose to as high as 60 cents a pound in the mid-1970s and then to 65 cents a pound in the early 1980s before support programs helped stabilize prices.

The volatile prices convinced U&I, owned by the Mormon church, that it could no longer process sugar beets profitably, and it decided to quit the business. It had soured on the sugar-beet industry and made the calculated decision to focus its efforts on potatoes.

Despite strong efforts on the part of Moses Lake officials, the processing plants closed in 1979. It was a major economic blow for the area and especially for growers. They had little warning of the closure, and it took several years for growers to recover by planting other crops.

That history is one reason for the formation of an unusual partnership for the new industry, said Price, the growers' representative in the new venture.

Columbia River Sugar represents the growers. It formed a limited partnership with Holly Sugar, a Sugarland, Texas, business that markets sugar to commercial and retail customers. Growers are the general partner, meaning they have controlling interests in the partnership.

The growers and Holly have formed Pacific Northwest Sugar, the company that will run and operate the sugar refinery. With a line of bank financing, they have put together the $100 million needed.

"Growers wanted some control this time around," Price said.

They have control, but they will also share the risk. There is the potential for problems in any agricultural project, but sugar for now seems a fairly sweet bet. Demand for sugar is growing at a rate faster than the amount of sugar - 2.5 million pounds - that the new plant will produce annually.

The plant itself will generate about $86 million a year in gross revenues, shared among the growers and Holly Sugar.

Price-support programs provide a cushion.

By a vote of 258-167, the House rejected an amendment to cut sugar-price supports by 1 cent a pound, to 17 cents for cane sugar and 21.9 cents for beet sugar. The federal sugar program consists of price supports as well as tariffs that limit competition from lower-cost, market-priced foreign sugar. Funded by assessments on growers and processors, the program does not cost the Treasury but drives up consumer prices.

Using new technology

The project is using new technology to its advantage.

Growers are adopting a "plant to stand" method of sowing seeds in the spring. Improvements in seeds all but guarantee germination, so growers do not have to use the old, labor-intensive method of thinning the crop once it has emerged from the ground.

Irrigation and careful use of various pesticides help keep weeds and bugs under control. Bergeson, the grower, takes cuttings from the plants periodically and has them analyzed both for sugar content and to keep track of other factors that might affect his plants.

As you drive along I-90 in the middle of the state, it is not hard to spot the new beet-sugar industry. The huge silos of the original plant loom on the horizon in this flat, arid region. The land seems to alternate between brown sagebrush and lush green, the latter the work of huge center-pivot sprinkler systems that irrigate the crops.

A few miles away, workers are scurrying around the new refinery, finishing up the complicated system of pipes and kilns used to turn beets into sugar. Some parts of the plant are being tested now, but no one knows how well the refinery will work until sugar beets start running through it.

John Steen, manager of the refinery, said some beets will be harvested Sept. 9 and processed starting the next day. Steen said the plant is state of the art for beet-sugar refineries, using centralized controls and requiring many fewer workers than the old one.

Although processing will start next month, it will be early October before the plant is running at full capacity. Beets usually are harvested beginning in mid-October and stored on the ground outside the plant until they are processed.

More than 600,000 tons of beets will be stacked in huge piles when harvest is finished, keeping the plant running well into February. That will provide about 300 seasonal jobs in the Moses Lake area, pumping $6 million to $7 million in payroll into the local community.

Moses Lake is listed among the distressed areas of the state, defined as areas where the unemployment rate is above 8 percent. Local officials praised the new plant for the economic stability that it can help bring the area.

Terry Brewer, head of the Grant County Economic Development Council, said the plant is an example of how the community can work together to keep industry in the region. More jobs come from working with what you have than from trying to attract new business from outside the region, Brewer said.

Processing beets is a complicated process. The beets are scrubbed to remove dirt and small rocks. Then they are washed and cut into strips, like big French fries. The beets go through a heat and chemical process that extracts sugar and water.

The sugar water is gradually distilled until a thick, molasseslike mixture is formed. This is heated much like the process of making candy on a stovetop. But unlike making candy, the beet-sugar process is aimed at making crystals. Once they form, the crystals are gradually refined to the consistency of sugar.

With the plant nearly completed and beet processing about to begin, Price is spending much of his time with the growers. He wants to help them combat the various weeds and bugs that can get into the crop.

A big hailstorm in early June damaged some fields, but they have come back.

Bergeson, the grower, checks his field regularly. Beets aren't the only crop he is growing; he has potatoes and barley elsewhere on the family farm. He sits in a small shed, surrounded by farm tools and a powerful computer. He is the bookkeeper of the farm as well as a farmer, a graduate of the University of Washington business school.

He keeps track of chemicals and the paperwork required for them. He keeps accounts and watches over the funds needed to operate the farm. Beets required some new equipment, but the family business had budgeted for it and bought some of it used.

"Equipment is expensive," he said. "But you spend the dollars you need to. A lot of people don't understand that farming is really a small business. That's what we're running here."

Right now, business is good. The weather has cooperated. The combination of ample water and sunshine has produced a good crop. Bergeson needs to check on the beets to see if a kind of worm that gets into the leaves is under control.

He checks leaves on some of the plants. Only a few have holes in them.

"Looks good," he said with the chink-chink-chink sound of the overhead sprinklers nearly drowning out his words. "Maybe 40 tons an acre."

How sweet it is.

Stephen Dunphy's phone message number is 206-464-2365. His e-mail address is: sdunphy@seattletimes.com