Sugar beet crop looking healthy as campaign hits the ground running
1st October 2024
Farmers Guide paid a visit to the Bury St Edmunds British Sugar factory, to find out how the 2024 campaign is going.
In the first week of the sugar beet campaign, British Sugar’s Bury St Edmunds and Wissington factories received around 100,000 tonnes of beet – slightly up on last year.
Crop area has also increased from around 99,000ha in 2023/24 to 102,000ha in 2024/25.
Dan Green, agriculture director at British Sugar, said Bury started much earlier last year, when some beet was lifted early due to flooding, but this year they have “hit the ground running”.
Challenging conditions in winter 2023 carrying through to spring this year, meant sugar beet drilling was later than expected on average, but still slightly earlier than 2023.
However, with good establishment and growing conditions through the summer, the crop is looking healthy, he said.
“Clearly some of the heavier land suffered some water logging last winter and that will have had some impact on the soil structure but sugar beet is a very resilient crop.
“It’s established very well this year and we’re looking at some very good healthy crops out there.
“Some of our growers who are lifting are seeing some very good yields,” he explained.
Sugar content is between 16-17% but it’s still very early in the season and Mr Green said he expects yields to continue building for the next month or so.
Virus yellows pressure
The Rothamsted forecast predicted a national virus yellows infection of 83% for 2024, triggering the emergency authorisation of Cruiser SB.
However, continual periods of rain through spring helped to control aphid numbers, resulting in much lower virus yellows pressure than expected.
“Only a small percentage of the crop has been impacted with virus yellows,” Mr Green said.
“There is some yellowing of some varieties but that’s more around some of the compaction issues we may have seen as a result of the wet weather.”
Around 60% of British Sugar’s growers used the Cruiser SB treatment in 2024.
Generally speaking, disease and pest pressure has been low this year, he added.
Threats to the sugar beet sector
Should Cruiser SB be unavailable in future, British Sugar is working on its virus yellows pathway with BBRO and NFU Sugar.
Mr Green said good progress is being made and promising new varieties are coming through the trial process.
As well as helping growers use integrated pest management in the short term, British Sugar was awarded a grant to support its work on genetic editing to bring virus yellows resistant varieties through “perhaps in the next decade”.
Looking to the future, virus yellows is clearly a key threat, but more generally climate change and extreme weather conditions mean the industry will have to think about changing its growing practices and potentially how beet is lifted, he added.
British Sugar and BBRO are also looking at genetic editing to produce more drought tolerant varieties.
100th campaign
British Sugar’s factory in Bury St Edmunds will celebrate its 100th campaign in 2025, and over that period Mr Green said there have been huge changes.
Scale and automation have allowed British Sugar to significantly reduce staff numbers and increase capacity.
“If you go back to around 1940, we had 18 factories slicing around 35,000 tonnes of beet a day,” he explained.
READ MORE: Sugar beet growers begin harvest for 2024/25 campaign
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“The two factories open today, Bury St Edmunds and Wissington, can slice up to 35,000t of beet on their own. That gives you some idea of the scale of change.”
British Sugar has also invested heavily in energy and carbon reduction, including in co-products and green energy.
The Bury St Edmunds factory has an AD plant that digests some of the pulp it produces to generate green energy that goes to the grid.
2025/26 contract
Under the 2025/26 sugar beet contract, British Sugar will pay a fixed price of £33/t for up to 70% of the contract.
Two other options are available with a slightly lower floor price that allow growers to take a little more risk and potentially see more upside if the market moves upwards.
“We’ve tried to cater for all of the growers that we’ve heard from,” Mr Green said.
“We’ve worked hard with NFU Sugar to come together and agree this year’s contract and work together to build a strong relationship.”
Listening to growers’ feedback from last year, they have also modified the seed model, though Mr Green said it will take some time for all of the changes to come through.
For 2025, growers will be able to purchase through the UK seed account or more directly from breeders.
British Sugar hasn’t launched seed for this year yet but over the next few weeks growers will be able to make their choices.
Read more sugar beet news.
