Sugar beet farming in colorado
Second Hoeing by Hope Williams Sykes
Papa’ll work her till she drops in the field! The backbreaking labor of German-Russian immigrants in the sugarbeet fields of Colorado is described with acute perception in Hope Sykess Second Hoeing. First published in 1935, the novel was greeted in all quarters as an impressive and authoritative evocation of these recent immigrants and their struggle to realize the promise of their chosen country.
Colorado Sugar Beets Fly Around- NDVI Field Heath Maps
News September 4, Local farmer Paul Fritzler with a truck loaded with beets.
Hope Williams Sykes
Water for Sugar Beet Farming
Since the s Weld County has been the state leader in sugar beet production and sugar beet acreage. By the s, upwards of , acres of sugar beets would be harvested in Weld County alone. As livestock feeding and dairy operations starting moving into the region, corn became the dominant crop and acreage declined in other crops. In , the production of sugar beets hit its peak in northern Colorado. It was also one of the worst years in history for the crop.
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Sugar beets played an important role in agriculture in the Cache la Poudre River Basin for the first half of the twentieth century. After Fort Collins and other Front Range towns built beet sugar processing factories in and , farmers in Larimer County grew more of these sugar-filled roots than any other crop except hay and wheat for fifty years., Earnings are up, production is high and Richard Seaworth — a second-generation sugar beet farmer near Wellington — is happy.
Of more than twenty sugar-refining factories, most built between and , only the Fort Morgan factory remains in operation. Industry historians often note that at the turn of the twentieth century, the dramatic growth of sugar beet production proved that settlers living in Colorado could make the desert bloom. The sugar beet industry also diversified an economy reliant on mining and ranching, as rural Colorado towns came to produce millions of pounds of white granulated sugar. At the close of the nineteenth century, newly constructed sugar factories across the American West began to produce white refined sugar from sugar beets grown in local fields. Fostered by local and federal support, Colorado became a leading sugar-producing state. However, this agricultural transformation was at the expense of Native American land rights.
A pristine view of Longs Peak and the Rocky Mountain range rests undisturbed to the west. Paul and his son, Scott, lead the farming today, and a sixth generation of the Schlagel family arrived earlier this month. More: Your guide to backyard chicken farming in Fort Collins. When harvested, sugar beets are about a foot long and weigh 2 to 5 pounds. But now technological and research advancements have the Schlagels and other farmers growing sugar beets as efficiently as ever. Despite a diminishing amount of farmland dedicated to the crop, Colorado farmers produced more than 1 million tons of sugar beets last year for the first time since
Today sugar beet production is a small part of Colorado's economy, but in the twentieth century it was the most important agricultural activity in.