Letter to the editor

I need my sugar fix first thing in the morning. If you give me a spoon full of cane sugar or beet sugar, makes no difference. It tastes and looks exactly the same. How can that be? One is a green stock and one is a brown beet.

We are in sugar beet country. And around this time of the year you know it. There is a certain kind of hustle and bustle type of electricity in the air. When the colorful leaves from the trees cheerfully dance along the sidewalk, people start to gather in groups for meetings. It’s countdown time. One day, ten hours and fifty minutes? It all depends on the weather now. No rain, please. Not right now. Not too cold and not too warm.

For the next six to eight weeks everything runs on precision. All equipment has been checked and double checked. Every possible truck and trailer is on standby. Local and out-of-state people have been scheduled for their twelve-hours-on, twelve-hours-off tours, seven days a week. The beet farmers are deciding which field to harvest first. A young future farmer of America, sitting on the rim of his dad’s pickup, takes in all that excitement. He is proud to be part of the process.

Then it starts. The first field has its green leaves ‘mowed’. The top of the beets get chopped off in order for easier harvest. The beets tumble through a ferris wheel to remove the soil before being loaded into a trailer driving tandem. Precision. A conveyor belt loads the beets into the large trailers. And, of course, the people – who run everything perfectly.

Just north of Kimball there is a place where conveyor belts steadily build ‘mountains’ out of beets. Mountains in Nebraska. If the temperature during the day rises above 65 degrees the harvest will have to stop until it cools down, or the beets will spoil in storage. If the temperature at night falls below freezing the beets will spoil in the ground. Those are not the only concern for the farmer. The farmer has to consider many variables and how to juggle it all. He needs to decide on how to rotate fields in order to manage the limited water supply. What crop should he grow in order not to deplete the soil? And he has to figure out which crop will be needed next year and which crop there will be too much of in the market.

Meantime, trucks loaded with beets are rolling through Kimball. Shops, gas stations, markets and restaurants are picking up business. Farmers are scarce around town to catch a chat with, and I need my afternoon sugar fix.

Whoever thought of getting white crystal sugar out of this brown beet? To me it smells, and tastes like a beet.

Monika Hielle – Kimball