Extractable sugar is money in the bank

Posted on September 11, 2025 by Sunny South News

By Cal Braid
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Gary Tokariuk is a southern Alberta farmer and president of the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers, the marketing board that administers quotas to its regional growers. The ASBG quotas are determined by the agreement it can reach with Lantic Inc./Rogers Sugar in Taber. If the sugar factory has high demand, it requests more acres of sugar beets to feed into the refinery. In recent years, the ASBG and Lantic have been at or near a 28,000 acre quota for the beets, but this year that number dropped by about 6,000 acres and Tokariuk explained why.

 “They supplied Coca Cola, and Coca Cola went back to high fructose sweetener, so that was probably the difference in the acres this year,” he said. “Mr. Trump is getting the cane sugar back into Coca Cola down south.”

 While beet sugar is almost uniquely Canadian, cane sugar is predominantly American, and politics, the economy, and tariff troubles have apparently upset the apple cart.

 International trade relations aside, Tokariuk has been managing his crops through another unexpectedly wet year. It started out dry, but that changed when summer arrived. But for those who thought it was a rather rainy July, Tokariuk simply summarized it as “adequate moisture.”

 He said his grain is about average this year but the sugar beets are looking good, though they’re still in the ground and will remain there until at least October.

 “We had a 12 inch water allocation from St. Mary Irrigation District, but I didn’t use all of it up. I probably did on the sugar beets, because we’ve been watering them right up to the end here,” he said. “I rent one quarter out for potatoes, and I don’t think they shut that pivot off. So, adequate…it was an average crop. I was hoping for a little better grain.”

 “This year was funny, because we were so dry in the spring and it was hard to get the crops going. And I think that’s what happened to the grain – we had to water a lot of it up, and it came in uneven,” he explained. “And, boy, the dry corners – the kochia (weed) just invaded this year, and I’ve never had stuff like that.”

 He said he seeded the sugar beets roughly two and a half weeks later than normal, “but now looking at my crop, we’re still another three weeks away from harvest, and I think my beets are every bit as good as last year, if not better.”

  In early September the chill began to creep back in during the night, and cool nights help intensify the sugar content in the beets. The sugar content by weight in profitable beets ranges from 17 to 19 per cent. Any percentage over 20 is superb and anything in the mid-to-low teens is on the poorer side, and the bottom line is that sugar content is where the money is. Sugar beets aren’t grown to be an edible vegetable, although a slice of a fresh beet tastes nice and sweet eaten raw.

 As for harvest, it’s later in the year for sugar beets. “My belief is Oct. 1,” Tokariuk said. “Some guys like to wait until Oct. 10 (or so), but that’s what’s great about farmers – everybody’s got a different idea.”

He said in 75 years, the family farm only left beets behind in a field once, and that was a few years ago when an unwanted early frost and snow arrived.

 “I like to get the beets out,” he said. “My son comes home from work in Calgary, and we stick him on a truck, and it’s a family affair here. Away we go.”