Better Beet Seed.
         Better Revenue.

By: Paul Morden, The Observer

Lambton County's sugar beet growers can expect higher prices this year, but uncooperative spring weather means yields could be down.

"We were a month late in planting here in Lambton," said Mark Lumley, a Sarnia farmer and vice-president of the Ontario Sugar Beet Growers Association.

Even with the adequate rain that fell over this summer and the lack of pressure from plant disease, yields are expected to be lower this fall, he said.

Sugar beets can't catch up after a late start, unlike some other crops.

"The overall good news is that the world price is at a near historical high right now," Lumley said.

"There are some poor crops in other parts of the world and demand is high."

Lambton's sugar beet producers sell their product to the U. S. market in Michigan, and not the world market. But, Lumley said, a rising world price still has a positive impact on the prices local producers will earn.

Another positive sign for sugar beet growers, Lumley said, is that the U. S. public is beginning to "lean away a bit from high fructose corn syrup."

Some food processors are switching from the corn-based sweetener to sugar to meet changing consumer demand, Lumley said.

"There has been a move, the last year or so, pretty strongly back in favour of sugar," he said.

"So that's helped the demand as well." This year's sugar beet harvest will

begin in mid-September and finish up in early November, Lumley said.

Lambton's 15 producers grow 3,500 acres of sugar beets.

All of Ontario's sugar beets are processed in Croswell, Michigan.

Ontario grew more than two-thirds of Canada's sugar beets in the early 1900s but the crop all but disappeared in the province after the last processing factory closed in 1968.

It began to make a comeback in southwestern Ontario in the 1990s as growers tapped into the U. S. sugar market.