 This is the Sugar Beet Report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season. Even though pre-pile is underway in the Mindak area of the valley, a big part of the season was very dry. But the sugar beet crop keeps bouncing back, according to Mike Metzger, Vice President of Agriculture and Research for the Mindak Farmers Cooperative. Mike, pre-pile is underway in your area. How are things going? Well, pre-pile for us is going actually very well. We started pre-pile on August the 22nd, backed it up a week. We initially kind of thought we'd get going around that 14th. We just decided based on the egg staff and the sample volumes, we kind of periodically assessed the crop as far as growth rate goes throughout the season, decided we'd need to leave it on the ground just a little bit longer, put on a few more tons, and that brought us to kind of that August 22nd is when we circled it on the calendar. Our normal pre-pile, we take off usually about 12% of the crop, 12 to 15% on any given year, and that's kind of normal for us. It's a very challenging time, especially on the cooperative side of the fence, because what you're balancing then is grower deliveries, which sometimes are voluntary. They don't have to participate in the pre-pile. You're dealing with mother nature, who can be wonderful or a cruel mistress at times, and then you're dealing with factory. And the factory, like any machine, when they start up, it could run perfectly or it could have hiccups. You don't know what it's going to be. So we operate for six weeks out of the year, as far as the cooperative's egg department goes, completely in the gray, and have to balance all or keep all of those three attributes in the air, and keep enough beets on the ground so that they don't spoil, but keep enough inventory or volume there so that the factory has enough feedstock to run at efficient level. So yeah, it's a bit of a juggle. What about earlier in the season? What kind of obstacles did growers face? The season for us has gone pretty darn well, I would say. The planting date, average planting date for us was around May 8th, which is much better than we experienced last year. Last year was the latest planting we've ever had in our 50-year history. We had enough rain, everything to get the crop up, and then the faucet shut off, and that came with its own set of challenges. It's been a very dry, dry year for us there. And as such, the crop hasn't progressed like we would expect it to. You get two things when you get dry. One, you don't get any disease, which is a good thing, so it's not hampered by that. And then two, the root, instead of being round like a pop can mid-season, what it is, it's a little bit smaller diameter, but then she has a very long, predominant taproot. And what it's doing is it's going down to mine for moisture. And that's very good as far as physiologically if you get rain later in the season, because then it'll swell up and get that classic shape. If it doesn't, then they stay skinny like carrots. And since they're tapped down so far, we snap a lot of tails off at harvest, and then your harvest loss goes up. We've been lucky enough that we dried off, they went down. We did receive the faucet finally turned on after the month of July was behind us, and we did see some pretty significant rainfall in the Mindak area that first part of August. That's caused us to swell a little bit. And right now, guys that are out harvesting or anywhere in that low to mid-20 range, as far as it's just concerned. Mike, did Sugar Beet producers in your area have any major wins? Absolutely. The one thing that was really unique for us this season is Circus Relief Spot Control. We've talked a lot about Circus Relief Spot the last five years. And this year, we are 100% of the CR Plus varieties offered by KWS. And that's in the crystal brand or the beta seed brand, beet seed. What it means is our fields stay green all the way through the end of September and into October, something that we haven't seen for a while. It means more tons in the beets. It means more sugar in the beets, which is what pays the bills. So we've been very, very pleased with the way those genetics are performing in conjunction with the funderside program that our growers are applying. Thanks, Mike. Our guest has been Mike Metzger, vice president of agriculture and research for Mindak Farmers Cooperative. This is the Sugar Beet Report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the Sugar Beet growing season.