Sugar beets (Beta vulgaris var. altissima) are grown around the globe and are a valuable option in modern crop rotation strategies. Last year, US farmers harvested 29.9 million tons of sugar beets on 1.3 million acres. Over the past 10 years, sugar beets accounted for more than 53% of US sugar production.
Sugar beets are tubers that grow in the ground much like garden beets, carrots or turnips. In autumn, farmers "campaign" or harvest the sugar beets by unearthing the tubers and trucking them to processing plants, where they are dumped in mountainous piles waiting their turn to be processed. First, dirt and debris are sifted and washed from the surface and the sugar beets are sliced into cossettes (chips). These cossettes are then steeped and (or) washed with hot water in countercurrent flow diffusers to extract the sugar. The extracted juice is further processed to produce granulated sugar suitable for the sweetener market and the residue (pulp) is dried. For ease of transportation and handling, most of the fibrous beet pulp is milled into 3/8-inch diameter pellets.
