Roundup Ready to the Rescue
April snow storms, wet fields and cold weather have sugar beet plantings in Idaho at least 2 weeks behind schedule, but shouldn’t greatly affect the 2009 crop. Nearly all of Idaho’s sugar beet crop is now Roundup Ready. The genetically modified seed costs more, but farmers can plant later and they still get the yields that they need to turn a profit. David Dixon of Wilder says last year’s season was identical to this year but Round-Up takes a lot of worry out of the beet crop. He says his operation drastically cut labor and diesel costs and ended up on the good side of the spreadsheet…in the black. “In diesel alone, that’s gonna add up to $4/acre or so but what we really saved was a good crop because with the rains and everything we had in the spring, we were not timely with our sprays and yet we were still able to control the weed pressure. We’d have had a disastrous year without Roundup Ready beets in 2008.”
