October brings a busy harvest season for southern Alberta sugar beet growers.
Gary Tokariuk is a farmer and the president of the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers. He said this year has been a challenging one.
“Myself personally, this was the worst growing season I’ve had,” said Tokariuk.
Southern Alberta is the sweet spot for producing the vegetable that is eventually refined into sugar and unfortunately Mother Nature was not kind to the region this year.
“I wasn’t the only guy with beets blown out, there was quite a few acres across southern Alberta with hail, I was not as bad as some areas. Some areas received a 100 per cent defoliation,” added Tokariuk.
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Tokariuk said in his 36 years of farming, he has never experienced such extensive wind damage to his beet crops.
“The beets all germinated, we had a great stand coming and then we had 115 km/h winds here and the dirt started sifting, and when it’s a little cotyledon it can’t take much,” said Tokariuk.
“It cuts the beet off at ground level and its done.”
Executive Director with Alberta Sugar Beet Growers Melody Garner-Skiba said fighting Mother Nature has been a big challenge for producers going back a few years now.
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“Weather has just been problematic for them from the get go. We saw that in 2019 — we left 45 percent of the crop in the ground so the farmers are always having to adapt to the changing weather conditions and to learn to roll with the punches,” said Garner-Skiba.
“But it would be nice if Mother nature gave us a bit of a break,” laughed Garner-Skiba.
She added many of the area producers are looking forward to moving on from this season.
“Its been a really tough year and I think we will be happy to kick 2022 to the curb,” said Garner-Skiba.
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