The Western Sugar Cooperative has 135,000 base acres and they are spread across a very diverse geography through Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana.

This diversity is both a strength and a challenge when it comes to crop production for the Cooperative and its members.

The strength is from the consistency in overall production across the Cooperative due to the distance between growing areas minimizing the impacts of disease and weather events.

The challenge comes in the sense that there are many “Best Management Practices” due to the uniqueness of each growing area within the regions.

The Western Sugar Cooperative is committed to working with our Shareholders in consistently improving the quality and total revenue of each of their farming enterprises.

Sugar beet is a hardy biennial plant that can be grown commercially in a wide variety of temperate climates. During its first growing season, it produces a large (1–2 kg) storage root whose dry mass is 15–20% sucrose by weight. If not harvested, during its second growing season, the nutrients in this root are consumed to produce the plant's flowers and seeds. In commercial beet production, the root is harvested after the first growing season, when the root is at its maximum size.

In most temperate climates, beets are planted in the spring and harvested in the autumn. At the northern end of its range, growing seasons as short as 100 days can produce commercially viable sugarbeet crops. Beets are planted from a small seed; 1 kg of beet seed comprises 100,000 seeds and will plant over a hectare of ground (1 lb will plant about an acre).

Up until the latter half of the 20th century, sugarbeet production was highly labor-intensive, as weed control was managed by densely planting the crop, which then had to be manually thinned with a hoe two or even three times during the growing season.