Fewer sugar beets will be grown this year in Ontario as the American buyer finds farmers closer to home willing to grow them.
Matthew Noorloos, chairman of the Ontario Sugar Beet Growers Association, said 3,582 Canadian shares (acres) were sold back to the Michigan Sugar Co. voluntarily in December.
"The main reason is the company pays for 50 per cent of the freight . . . we are the farthest" from the processing plant, he said.
Since local farmers started growing sugar beets in the early 2000s, Noorloos said yields in some fields have doubled to as high as 50 tons an acre.
"The [Michigan] plant has a fixed processing capacity, so they're always trying to optimize the acreage to process the right amount of tons, so you don't have spoilage from carrying over too many tons," he said.
