Sugar beet planting area increases; can you make money growing sugar beets in 2017?

Original title: Sugar beet planting area rises sharply; expert: sugar prices are high, and you can still profit next year.

According to a report by China National Radio's "Sannong China", sugar beet is an important raw material for sugar production, and its producing areas are mainly distributed in **, Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia and other places. In recent years, as edible sugar prices have stayed high, the purchase price of sugar beets has risen along with them, the planting area has also increased accordingly, and farmers' income has grown relatively quickly.

For days, the sugar beet purchasing station in Bingli Village, Dayushu Town, Kailu County, Inner Mongolia, has been bustling with traffic, as sugar beet growers from the village pulled carts full of sugar beets and rushed to the purchasing station from all directions to sell them. Grower Jia Hongwei, who had just finished unloading his sugar beets, said happily that this year his family's 75 mu of sugar beets had a bumper harvest, and the price was two times higher than that of corn.

Jia Hongwei: One mu yields about more than four tons, at 480 yuan per ton, for a net income of more than 1,500. This year's price is better than corn, and normally it can reach twice that of corn.

Affected by the continued slump in corn prices, this year Bingli Village, as a major corn-producing area, adapted measures to local conditions and vigorously developed sugar beet planting, with almost all of more than 1,000 mu planted with sugar beets, and the returns were fairly good. Jiang Ming, Party branch secretary of Bingli Village:

Jiang Ming: Bingli Village has a total of 37 growing households, and this year 1,000 mu of sugar beets were planted. This year's sugar beet harvest can also be considered especially good. Harvesting is now underway, and from what we can see now, the net sugar beets per mu are all around five tons, and the price is 480 yuan per ton, so one mu brings in an income of 2,500 to 2,600 yuan; after costs of more than 600 yuan per mu, about 2,000 yuan can be left, so the returns are very considerable.

Because the returns from sugar crops are relatively higher than those of other crops, and combined with the continued rise in sugar prices over the past two years, farmers are quite motivated to plant them. In 2016, the national sugar beet planting area was about 2.4 million mu, an increase of 18% compared with 2015. Taking the main sugar beet producing areas ** and Inner Mongolia as examples, this year **'s sugar beet planting area increased from 920,000 mu to 970,000 mu, a rise of 5%; Inner Mongolia's planting area rose from 680,000 mu to 950,000 mu, a rise of 40%; Wang Tao, a market analyst at Zhuochuang Info, pointed out that although the planting area has increased somewhat, sugar beet prices are relatively stable and will continue to remain high.

Wang Tao: The sugar beet purchase price in 2016 was not much different from last year. **'s average sugar beet purchase price was around 443 yuan/ton, slightly lower than last year's 448 yuan/ton; while Inner Mongolia's sugar beet purchase price in the past two years has remained at 530-540 yuan/ton. The main use of sugar beet is sugar production. Because in the 2016/2017 year national white sugar output fell short of demand, sugar prices are expected to remain high in 2017, so the purchase prices of sugar crops such as sugarcane and sugar beet are unlikely to fall, and they are expected to continue to maintain this high price level in 2017。

It is understood that sugar beet planting is mainly carried out through contract production, with the products supplied to local sugar factories. At the beginning of this year, Bingli Village, Dayushu Town, Kailu County, established a sugar beet planting professional cooperative, adopted the "cooperative + farmers" planting model, and signed a 1,000-mu sugar beet planting and buyback contract with a local enterprise, with a selling price of 480 yuan per ton. Zhou Xicheng, agricultural affairs officer of the sugar business division of Inner Mongolia Chifeng Angel Yeast Co., Ltd.:

Zhou Xicheng: Starting in spring, our company specially sent people and technical staff to follow up on services and provide seeds and fertilizer, and then handled purchasing at autumn harvest. We purchase at 480 yuan per ton. The planting area in Bingli Village, Dayushu Town, is 1,000 mu, with an estimated output of 5,000 tons, and the ordinary people's net income is about 1,500 yuan or more than 1,500 yuan.

In the past two years, white sugar prices have been relatively high, and sugar beet planting returns have been relatively large. In some areas, the returns from sugar beet planting have reached twice those of corn. Wang Tao advises growers to maintain an appropriate planting scale and make full use of policies to develop advantageous industries.

Wang Tao: For sugar beet growers, it is recommended that they maintain their own sugar beet planting bases well and not easily reduce their planting area. In addition, in recent years the government and local sugar factories have carried out improvements in fine seeds and mechanization for sugar beet planting bases. Growers can rely on policy support to develop sugar beet planting into a local advantageous industry.