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| American Crystal Sugar Company posted One hundred years ago today, on October 6, 1926, our #EastGrandForksFactory began its very first sugarbeet processing campaign. That first season, 10,000 acres were harvested across the district. The factory sliced 1,100 tons of beets per day and produced 200,000 bags of sugar. It was the beginning of something that would grow into the largest beet sugar producer in the United States and a cornerstone of the Red River Valley economy. A century later, the factory stands stronger than ever and is proud to continue calling East Grand Forks its home. #EGFFactory100 Michael Hill: At the beginning sugar beet tops were fed to farm animals for feed. Today they are poisoned from the spray. In the early 1960s we were spraying the beets. Daniel Jensen: Michael Hill Refined white sugar from sugar beets typically contains no detectable pesticide residues. The multi-step industrial process (washing, extraction, purification, crystallization, and refining) effectively removes them. Pyramid (Pyramid / chloridazon) and TCA (trichloroacetic acid) are classic, traditional herbicides is what we used. |
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| Michael McGrath commented on the above post In total crystal sugar as the 5 factory groups did 13.3 million tons of raw beets last year. A fair shake for Grand forks would be 2.5 million which equates to 900 million lbs of sugar over the course of the year. [Doing some arithmetic with some more numbers that he provided, a truck hauls 25 tons of beets. So 100,000 trucks have to unload at this plant during the one month "harvest campaign." |
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| Nick Due, Jul 2025 |
2.5m tons of beets creates some big piles.
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| Luke Welte, Jan 2026 |
The town was served by GN and NP.
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| rail.guide |
Today, the routes that remain are owned by BNSF.
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| rail.guide |
