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Severe weather forces end to sugar beet harvest in southern Alberta

Rogers Sugar has pulled the plug on this year’s sugar beet harvest.
In a news release, the company says because of the adverse severe weather conditions this season across Alberta, it’s terminating the 2019 harvest leaving 45% of the crop in the ground.

The decision was made following an exhaustive analysis by the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers and Rogers, which jointly determined that severe snow and frost damage has resulted in an inability to store or process the unharvested damaged sugar beet crop.

As a result, they now estimate the current crop should derive a quantity of refined sugar ranging between 60,00 and 70,000 metric tonnes.

The shortfall will be made up with cane sugar from its Vancouver and Montreal refineries, which both have excess capacity.

There are 190 beet producers in southern Alberta. The only sugar beet processing plant in Canada in in Taber.

(With files from CBC)

Patrick Siedlecki
Patrick Siedlecki
Pat has been a mainstay in the CJOC News department from the time the station launched in 2007. He's been in the position of News Director since then and has been anchoring daily news casts as well as reporting and working behind the scenes. Community is important to him and keeping CJOC listeners and readers informed about what's happening across southern Alberta and beyond. Pat has been in radio broadcasting for the past 24 years, starting in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island in 1997 and then moving up island to Nanaimo for another few years before heading to Lethbridge in 2007. Pat grew up in the small Saskatchewan farming town of Foam Lake. After high school, he went to Western Academy Broadcasting College (WABC) in Saskatoon prior to moving to the island. Pat also spent several years broadcasting hockey in the BCHL as well as seven years as the radio voice of the Lethbridge Hurricanes in the WHL. Pat has been working at Cornerstone Funeral Home in Lethbridge as a Certified Life Celebrant and Funeral Assistant since 2016. News and sports have always been Pat's passion from the time he was a teenager and he's always been grateful to have had the opportunity to make that part of what's been a fun and long radio career!
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