June 15, 1967
Page 16071
THEY SAID IT COULDN'T BE DONE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, despite imposing obstacles, a new agricultural industry has been established in Aroostook County, Maine, that of sugar beet processing. This has all been accomplished within the short span of 3 years.
The new refinery at Easton stands as a tribute to the imagination and hard work of the many Maine people who contributed to the success of this project. The refinery also symbolizes what can be accomplished when local, State, and Federal Governments work together toward one common goal.
I ask unanimous consent that an interesting report on the impact of this project on Maine's economy be included at this point in the RECORD. The article originally appeared in the March-April issue of Maine Line, the excellent Bangor & Aroostook Railroad publication, and is entitled "A Dream Is for Real."
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
A DREAM Is FOR REAL
The first crop of Aroostook sugar beets – some 21,000 tons – was processed in the area's own refinery early in 1967. The achievement came after five years of agonizing effort. The plant will soon begin processing raw sugar cane, partially processed sugar cane, that will be shipped into Searsport by water, then railed to the Easton refinery.
The first modest production of sugar was, for the handful of men who have kept the dream of an Aroostook beet sugar industry alive over five rocky years, a moral victory of Herculean proportions. As a buffer to Aroostook's unruly one-crop economy, growers have long sought a secondary cash crop to relieve the aura of feast or famine. Among the more improbable efforts in this direction was the production of hops in the 70's. Others, while modestly successful, have never quite made the grade as a No. 2 cash crop. As a consequence, the fortunes of this richly endowed area rise and fall with the capricious price of potatoes. And that, as any grower will attest, is a tenuous link with fortune.
BEETS A SECOND CASH CROP
In 1962, following several years of disastrously low potato prices, sugar beets received serious consideration as a secondary cash crop by the Maine Potato Council and it formed a committee to procure a sugar beet allotment. Testimony was presented before the USDA Sugar Division in 1962. It became obvious that there was not nearly enough information on the feasibility of Maine beets.
Other groups offered help and in 1963, 32 fields of test plots were planted. An engineering firm was hired to make a complete economic feasibility study using the results of the test and the work done by Maine Agricultural Experiment Station and the University of Maine.
The second presentation before the Sugar Division was thoroughly professional and a 33,000 acre allotment was announced in 1964. The stage seemed set for a healthy sugar beet industry.
But a bombshell fell in 1965 when the company that had agreed to build and operate the factory withdrew from the project.
Frantic efforts to find another sugar company were ineffective and it began to look as though all the effort and money invested in the project would go for nothing. It was at this bleak point that Fred H. Vahlsing, Jr., executive vice president of Vahlsing, Inc., a nationally-known produce company that owns a potato processing plant at Easton, announced that he would form a new company, Maine Sugar Industries, Inc., to build a refinery in time to process the 1966 crop.
It was no task for a cautious man. Vahlsing, who delights in challenge and drama, plowed into the project, and probably no one except Vahlsing, himself, believed that it would be done. The phenomenal task of financing and building the $19.5 million project was accomplished between April, 1965, and the closing days of 1966.
Vahlsing breathed life back into the project at a time when the patient appeared about to expire. MSI contracted for the first beets – 3,431 acres – in 1966. It was within the time limits set by the USDA for the sugar allocation.
Because the full allocation of 33,000 acres of sugar beets would only require 130 processing days, Vahlsing designed his plant to process raw imported cane for the balance of the year. At peak operation, the plant will employ 410 persons. The movement will begin through Searsport within a few weeks.
The industry has had some very real growing pains which is not remarkable. What is amazing, however, is that the sugar beet industry is alive at all, after the traumatic experience of winning an allotment and losing the refinery at the eleventh hour.
Between the time of loss of the original sugar company and Vahlsing's dramatic entry, however, there, were several good potato years and many who had been eager to plant beets suddenly remembered the taste of five dollar potatoes. The first season was light, but there are indications that the acreage this year will at least triple last year's acreage, and double again next year.
Maine Sugar Industries has offered sweetening ranging from long-term lease purchasing of necessary sugar beet machinery with no down payment to higher payments for potatoes at Vahlsing's potato processing plant for those who grow sugar beets to specifications. For nearly two months, Stanley Greaves, manager for the Maine Sugar Beet Growers Association, and fieldmen for Vahlsing have been holding meetings throughout Aroostook to stir grower interest.
"This isn't a crop that's meant to take the place of potatoes," Greaves emphasizes. "It's a cash crop that's meant to be used in rotation with potatoes. And, surely, if we can grow 49,000 acres of oats we can grow 33,000 acres of sugar beets."
The investment in machinery, a big question mark for prospective growers, is an estimated $12,000 that includes a planter, blocker, disc and knives, harvester and truck conversion. MSI offers a lease-purchase arrangement with payments extending up to seven years.
BEETS CAN BE GROWN
There is no longer any doubt that sugar beets can be successfully grown in Aroostook County. University of Maine studies and Vahlsing's own test plots prove that Aroostook yields and sugar content are high. The sugar beet requires substantially the same environment as the potato. The warm days and cool nights so typical of the area are ideal for producing high suger content in beets.
MSI and the Sugar Beet Association feel that, with experience, yields of from 15 to 20 tons an acre can be realized. The percentage of sugar ranges from 16.32 to 19.45 With an average of 17.94. At this yield, the net return per acre would be $150 an acre. During one test year, 1963, the net return per acre for potato production was $68 and for sugar beets $76, according to a University of Maine study. Anyone familiar with the Aroostook grower's ability to produce high yields of good quality potatoes from the country's rich Caribou loam can hardly have any doubt about his ability to do the same with sugar beets.
After 75 years of continuous potato culture, the fields of the Aroostook farm have a high degree of fertility. Sugar beets, grown in rotation with potatoes, produce a highly beneficial side benefit leaving rich deposits of organic material in the soil. The sugar beet has a truly spectacular root system whose main artery is a tap root that reaches a depth of from six to seven feet.
Smaller roots project from the tap root creating a mass of plant matter that remains in the soil
when the beet is harvested. The extensive root network and its movement also aerates the soil for the next rotational crops. Sugar beet growers report substantially increased yields for crops that are grown in rotation with the beets.
Some 782,542 acres of land is cleared for agricultural crops in Aroostook County and approximately 405,190 acres is presently utilized for actual production. About three quarters of this acreage, or 299,900, according to studies, is suitable for growing sugar beets. This includes all the acreage now used for spring oats, clover and sod and cover crops.
What sugar beets could do for the Aroostook potato grower is provide a measure of economic stability. Just how extreme the fluctuation has been can be seen by a look at the value of the potato crop between 1946 and 1963. It ranged from $110 million in 1948, $23 million in 1954, $40 million in 1959 and $70 million the next year. On the other hand, there is little guesswork in beet prices; they are negotiated by the Sugar Beet Growers Association and MSI, under the eye of the USDA.
A grower takes the traditional risks with nature in sugar beets, as with any other crop, but a crop failure in Aroostook County is nearly unheard of. The uncertainties of marketing and storing the crop are eliminated. And the grower finishes the year with a profit that should be in the area of $150 an acre. This does not take the place of his potato crop, but only of a rotation crop.
A thriving sugar beet industry will benefit the entire northern Maine community, from the grower who can pocket over $3 million under the full allotment, to the 400 people who will be actually engaged in refining the crop.
The railroad will also enjoy the fruits of a strong, secondary cash crop and has invested heavily in hopper cars to handle beets and raw cane, new tracks and in the plant itself. After 75 years of boom and bust with a one crop economy, sugar beets hold the promise of stability for the traditionally turbulent economy.
Historically, there's a precedent to today's fledgling sugar beet industry in northern Maine. Just 89 years ago this summer, Aroostook County farmers planted their first crop of commercial sugar beets. The year before Governor Selden Connor had recommended and the legislature had enacted a law providing a bounty "not exceeding one cent a pound for all beet sugar manufactured in the state from beets raised in the state."
The law, and the interest in sugar beets, was inspired by the success of the blossoming sugar beet industry in Illinois and California. A refinery was built at Portland and a drying kiln at Presque Isle. The Aroostook beets were dried at the Presque Isle kiln and the pulp shipped to the Portland refinery by rail.
Clarence W. Day's authoritative book, "Farming in Maine," called the results encouraging. Aroostook farmers delivered 500 tons of beets to the kiln at Presque Isle, but the operation of the kiln and the freight to Portland Was so expensive that the project was abandoned after one year. Yields were satisfactory.
Growers in the western part of the state continued, however, and grew 1,000 acres for $5.00 a ton delivered to the railroad or $6.00 a ton delivered to the factory. The factory produced 900 tons of sugar that year, an amount below break-even cost, and the project was abandoned.
The early effort with sugar beets proved that the crop could be grown successfully in Aroostook County. Transportation costs and the separation of the refinery from the growing area were largely responsible for its demise.