What effects has the cold (by our recent standards anyway) weather had on my sugar beet crop?
Actually, despite possible appearances, this is not a rhetorical question. I genuinely don't know the answer, and probably won't for several weks yet. The development of beet growing in the UK, and in particular our longer campaigns, has not previously been subjected to such a prolonged spell of cold weather as this. When this sort of weather was "normal", our campaigns ended about now, so any beet being delivered was generally coming out of a clamp. Storage in a clamp, the term we use for a pile when we want it to sound more organised, has been better understood for some years now, and the use of big straw bales as retaining and insulating walls is fairly widespread. But what will beet be like when they are loaded away after a couple of months? The theory is that they will be OK, and that's what recent experience suggests, but I guess there will be some interesting moments ahead of us all.
My sugar beet mountain, harvested in December, has all now been delivered to the factory. Sugar content varied between 17 and 19%, but overall the quality seemed good. They certainly didn't appear any the worse for their rather unconventional treatment. Perhaps we don't yet know all the answers! I still have about 900T in another heap, and 15 hectares to harvest. I walked over the unharvested beet yesterday morning, and although the leaves were obviously blackened and decaying, I will tempt fate by saying that the beet themselves looked sound enough. The next decision will be when to harvest these beet. The ground is currently still too hard from frost to be practical, and once it thaws it will no doubt be a fearfully sticky mess. I think that indecision and prevarication, masquerading as patience, will be the order of the day.
This is the time of year when arable farmers tend to take stock and plan for the coming growing season. We like to think we can learn lessons from last year, and at least hope that the mistakes we make next year will be different ones. In terms of sugar beet, as the old growing season now merges seamlessly into the new one, it's getting harder to know when that period of quiet reflection is supposed to take place. For me, I think it will take place next week in the Italian Dolomites, where the snow will be the attraction as opposed to a nuisance!