All the signs point to a best-ever sugar beet harvest for local growers.

Sampling has growers and company alike buoyant about the final 2024 beet crop in the Lovell factory district of the Western Sugar Cooperative.

That’s the optimistic vibe as harvesters churn in the fields and beet trucks roll again. The early dig in area sugar beet fields began on Monday, Sept. 9.

Designated receiving stations and the factory piling ground at Lovell will be open for beet deliveries five days a week until Oct. 6. Receiving stations will rotate — one will shut down and another will start — during the early harvest period.

The sugar factory at Lovell began its seasonal processing campaign on  Sept. 10.

Western Sugar Cooperative officials met with growers at a pre-harvest meeting on Sept. 4. The purpose was to go over the schedule for early dig and the regular, all-out harvest set to start on Oct. 6. To feed the factory at start-up, each contracted grower is responsible for the delivery of 6 tons per acre of beets in the early dig.

Lovell factory district growers have about 14,500 acres contracted with the cooperative in 2024. That total acreage is up just a little from 2023.

Headline news was shared with growers at the pre-harvest meeting when results of two field crop samples from the growing season were presented.

“It could be the largest crop ever,” said Ric Rodriguez, Heart Mountain grower and a director of the Western Sugar Cooperative board of directors. “Overall, we’ve got some nice looking beets. It’s been a remarkable growing year.”

The second sample in August showed pretty significant crop growth from the first reading, and Western Sugar was able to project that the crop in the field at that time registered an average tonnage of 19.7 tons to the acre. Average sugar content of 14.1% was measured in the August sample and that projects to 18.6% in the final crop.

“They know the growth rate, and if the crop was 19.7 tons to the acre in the field in August, they can estimate a harvested crop averaging  31.7 tons per acre this year,” Rodriguez said. “That almost 32-ton per acre crop could be even bigger depending on the weather.”

That would be a record crop for the Lovell factory district and a sizable bump up from the 2023 final average of 28.8 tons to the acre “if we can get them all processed,” he added. That qualifier is a gesture to the unknown — the weather factor.

“From what we know, the weather looks pretty good through September, but that can always change,” Rodriguez noted.

Going into the harvest season, the majority of the 2024 crop has already been sold at a price favorable to growers, he said.

67th harvest for Rodriguez

The excitement is still there in a harvest routine that will always get the juices flowing for Heart Mountain grower Paul Rodriguez.

The 2024 sugar beet harvest just happens to be the 67th year that he has been at it. At 92 years old, he is still active in the family farming operation headed by his son Ric Rodriguez.

Paul Rodriguez started growing sugar beets on 13 acres near Kamm’s Corner in the Heart Mountain farming area in 1957. From that meager start, he grew into the fabled role of “Sugar King,” so-called for the grower with the largest number of sugar beet acres for then Great Western Sugar Co. At the time, he was growing over 500 acres of sugar beets, a figure that that has risen to 1,500 acres of beets today.

At its heyday, Paul Rodriguez served 15 years as president of the former Big Horn Basin Sugar Beet Growers Association.

Stutzman retires from Western board

Longtime North End farmer Tod Stutzman of Powell has retired from the board of directors of Western Sugar Cooperative.

Stutzman was one of two Wyoming beet growers on the board. The other is Ric Rodriguez of Powell, who is secretary-treasurer of the nine-member Western Cooperative board representing growers in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado and Nebraska.

At  the cooperative’s annual meeting in January, a second Wyoming grower will be elected to the board.