$75 million due on 73 beet crop

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THE DENVER POST

51

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By JACK PHINNEY Denver Post Business Writer . Great Western Sugar Co. next week will ,tnakc an initial 1973 crop payment of $75.2 · million for sugar beets in five states. ; The company said the payment is a

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record and amounts to $17.15 a ton. It will go to about 4,000 growers in Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming and

Mon-tana. .

In addition, $9.6 million in Sugar

Act

payments, derived from a federal tax on the sugar industry, will go to growers in the five states. This will bring the total to $84.8 million, or $19.33 a ton.

The payments are for beets delivered

before Nov. 5. Company payment for

beets delivered after that will be made in mid-December. This year, because of

ex-cellent harvest wea.ther, 98 per cent of the

crop was delivered before Nov. 5.

. The initial payment this year is $2.80 a

ton greater than that of a year ago. Raw sugar prices currently are more than 20

per. cent higher than they were a year ago.

Growers will receive additional

pay-ments for the 1973 crop in April and Oc-.tober 1974, but these probablv won't total

more than 5 per cent of the initial

payment._

-rhe l973 beet crop in the five states was

slightly below average in sugar content

because of a poor growing season in some areas. In eastern Colorado and Western Kansas, for example, sugar content was down because adver~e spring weather

delayed plantings. But in other areas-the · Lovell, Wyo., area for one-sugar content was up, and the initial 1973 crop payment to growers there will be more than the three-payment total they received for