PLO NW MN - 8/20/2025 14:03
GS2 - 8/19/2025 19:25
Seen this on Facebook, my question is why does it appear any and all Minnesota Sugar Beet Cooperatives are buying plants and other cooperatives just to shut them down and take the acres?
You rarely hear of any plant expansion up here, and prepile and the finish of the campaign are about the same every year, so are they just sitting on acres or what is going on? From what I recall last year most in ND and MN said they were full on beets but many acres remained to be harvested.
Its not just plants in California either, they've done it to plants in Montana recently as well.
You’re talking about two different Coops as if they are one.
Southern Minnesota Sugar beet cooperative and American Crystal Sugar cooperative.
I’m a member/owner of American Crystal. We closed Sydney after trying to sell it to area growers. As any negotiations they apparently thought it should be cheaper as buyers and our BOD and management thought it had more value. After the failed negotiations we operated for another 3 maybe 4 years. Acres were harder to contract in the area with high commodity prices and American Crystal took a loss operating the factory
American Crystal has expanded processing capacity in all 5 of our plants over the decades with the latest being a multi year expansion of the Drayton factory.
2000 was the first year my dad had a field average 20 ton to the acre. 2009 was the first year my uncle had a field average 30 ton a high mark we didn’t hit again on our farm for almost a decade.
As production has increased we’ve reduced acres planted per share. In 1990s we planted 104% per share on the odd year. Now 80% per share.
We’ve invested millions into storage to keep beets frozen into spring to keep factories processing as temps warm.
Minnesota Sugar Beet Cooperatives closing plants
