The Western Sugar Cooperative operates 54 receiving locations with 72 pilers and 2 tare labs in 4 states. Our seasonal labor hiring to operate the pilers and tare lab is 600+ harvest time employees. Our harvest focus is to pile and store an excellent quality beet in a safe and efficient manner. It takes a team of dedicated employees and Shareholders working together to achieve these goals.

This section of the website is designed to provide policies and information to help our Shareholders succeed at harvest time.

Harvesting used to require many workers. Although the roots could be lifted by a plough-like device which could be pulled by a horse team, the rest of the preparation was by hand. One laborer grabbed the beets by their leaves, knocked them together to shake free loose soil, and then laid them in a row, root to one side, greens to the other. A second worker equipped with a beet hook (a short handled tool something between a billhook and a sickle) followed behind, and would lift the beet and swiftly chop the crown and leaves from the root with a single action. Working this way he would leave a row of beet that could then be forked into the back of a cart.

Today, mechanical sowing, herbicide application for weed control and mechanical harvesting has removed this reliance on workers.

Harvesting is now entirely mechanical. The beet harvester chops the leaf and crown (which is high in non-sugar impurities) from the root, lifts the root, and removes excess soil from the root in a single pass over the field. A modern harvester is typically able to cover 6 rows at the same time. The beet is left in piles at the side of the field and then conveyed into a trailer for delivery to the factory. The conveyor removes more soil -a farmer would be penalized at the factory for excess soil in his load.

In the US, the fall harvest begins with the first hard frost, which arrests photosynthesis and the further growth of the root. Depending on the local climate, it may be carried out in few weeks or be prolonged throughout the winter months. The harvest and processing of the beet is referred to as "the campaign", reflecting the organization required to deliver crop at a steady rate to processing factories that run 24 hours a day for the duration of the harvest and processing