The Wonderful World of Sugar Beets

It’s that time of year where sugar beets are being harvested! I have yet to see a sugar beet field here in Utah (maybe I just need to look harder!) but they are everywhere in Idaho. My grandpa and uncle always grow them, and I have lots of memories of having to weed the fields… Fun times!

The rows of sugar beets right before they’re harvested. Photo by Bobbie Real

Sugar beets are harvested by being topped then dug out of the ground.

Digging the beets. Photo by Bobbie Real

The sugar beets being dropped into the truck to be hauled to the beet dump. Photo by Bobbie Real

This is what a sugar beet root, the part that is processed into sugar, looks like. Photo by Bobbie Real

They are then hauled in trucks to a beet dump, which is basically a place where they pile up a bunch beets. After that they are taken to a sugar beet processing factory to be made into sugar. The Sugar Industry Biotech Council explains the process really eloquently,

Beet sugar processing normally is accomplished in one continuous process. During the process, the natural sugar stored in the beet root is separated from the rest of the plant material. The sugar beets are washed, sliced and boiled in water to begin the sugar extraction process. The resulting sugar-containing juice is filtered, concentrated to a thick syrup by boiling where the sugar begins to crystallize, washed with hot water in a rapidly spinning centrifuge to separate sugar and molasses and dried in a series of steps. After sugar and molasses have been recovered from the sugar beet, the remaining pulp is utilized for animal feed.

I love that almost every part of the beet is utilized in some way. I lived just a few miles away from a sugar beet factory, but I never knew how they actually got the sugar from them!

Other Fun Facts about Sugar Beets:

• Getting sugar from beets is a relatively new idea. It was discovered in Germany in the late 1700s
• Cane sugar and beet sugar are identical in every way. They are both just pure sucrose
• According to agrmc.org  54% of sugar in the U.S. comes from sugar beets
• Sugar beets are one of the USDA approved genetically modified crop

Doing the research about sugar beets was strangely fascinating to me. I’d like to learn more about different crops and how they are produced and processed. If you have any suggestions for crops for me to study up on next let me know in the comments!