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Sugar beet has recently made ag press headlines for more reasons than simply this year's harvest progress. But while negotiations between British Sugar and the NFU on next season's contract had reached an impasse back late November, the former sought to show it is investing a significant proportion of recent increases in income at the processing stage, and how it believes this will benefit the industry as a whole in terms of efficiency and of environmental obligations.ÌýÌýÌý

With 2,300 farmers growing 90,000 hectaresÌýproducing 8m tonnes, sugar beet retains an important place in the rotation on many farms in eastern, mid and northern England within economic transport distance of the three East Anglia factories and the Newark plant. But with higher growing costs, many farmers seeking to reduce movement-intensive soil practices across arable crops, and the energy-intensive process of producing sugar from beet coming under scrutiny for both environmental and cost reasons, there is pressure at both ends of the beet sugar production chain to improve the crop's environmental credentials and ensure the production of environmentally sound and economically viable beet and sugar.Ìý

"Over the past 15 years, beet yields have risen 21 per cent, and in the past three decades by 50 per cent,Ìýthrough better varieties, chemistry and husbandry," pointed out Andrew Dear, British Sugar head of technical support. The company said it produces as much sugar as it did 20 years ago despite the beet area having shrunk by 90,000ha.Ìý

"While only 4 per cent of the area is irrigated, UK yields are consistently in the top quartile of European averages. In addition to the efforts of growers and our field team, the BBRO, which we co-fund, plays an important role here, particularly in areas such as virus yellows research.Ìý

"With the advantages of beet in the rotation including a broader spread of crop types and of labour utilisation, and a contribution to soil organic matter levels, we believe the crop has an assured future, but we do recognise that we as processors and the growers we work with face challenges we need to address, from soil conservation and pest and disease control to energy consumption and CO2 emissions."Ìý

Neonicotinoids

Mr Dear highlighted the continued use of neonicotinoid seed treatments on an emergency authorisation basis based on aphid forecasts as key among these, with about 60 per centÌýof this year's beet area sown with seed treated with Cruiser (thiomethoxam) for protection against virus yellows transmission by aphids.Ìý

"Thankfully we ultimately saw minimal impact this year, the prolonged cold and wet spring spell knocking back aphid activity. If we had a bad year again like 2020, it's still hard to see any alternative, but we do want to move away from neonics as an industry, and through the BBRO we are working particularly with varieties and genetics to look at plant resilience to the problem, as well as other ideas such as camouflage cropping. Further work with Norwich biotech firm Tropic is assessing the value of gene-editing to help, but this is longer-term research from which conclusive results are unlikely until around 2030.ÌýÌý

"Elsewhere, through development of our beet delivery service and field to factory partnership we aim to help maximise flexibility and efficiency for growers, harvesters and hauliers during the campaign, and at the request of growers we have also restarted harvester evaluations to ensure we all benefit from best performance."

Investments aid environmental obligationsÌý

The high energy consumption process of beet processing and sugar manufacturing means itÌý has a significant carbon footprint, but British Sugar says it is investing heavily to help cut back both. According to Phil Macnaughton, its head of decarbonisation, since making a 2018 commitment to cut its carbon emissions by 30 per centÌýby 2030, the business has reduced them by 42,000 tonnes across its facilities.Ìý

"With beet being 75 per centÌýwater, there's a significant energy requirement in removing most of this to produce our end products, from sugar itself to dried pulp feed products," he pointed out.Ìý

"Ultimately we are changing a product that's 16 per cent dry matter during processing to one that's 32 per cent at the pulp stage, and to convert pulp to dried animal feed we then need to double that again, requiring significant dryer usage and coal or gas fuelling, depending on the factory and the stage of our renewal process.Ìý

"But over the past four decades we have halved the overall energy needed to produce a tonne of sugar. In recent years we have invested heavily in energy reduction and fuel switching to reduce CO2 emissions and steam demand, and here at Wissington we're now using 25 per centÌýless steam thanks to installation of an eighth evaporator, which as well as reducing the factory's energy consumption cuts our carbon emissions by 10 per cent.That's one of a number of recent energy use and CO2 reduction investments across our factories."Ìý

But taking beet sugar and dried pulp feed production to the next stage of reductions in energy usage and CO2 production is more challenging, acknowledged Mr Macnaughton.Ìý

"The temperature and pressure at which we operate our evaporators can only be reduced so much, and the next step - alternative energy usage - will not be easy, with the primary alternatives of electrification or hydrogen both being complex and expensive. Work is ongoing in this area, though."

Europe's largest beet factory

When Wissington sugar beet factory was opened in 1925, it could process 600t/day of beet. Today it is the largest beet processing site in Europe, handling 840t/hr, with the capacity to hold 50,000t of beet on the site's flat pads at any one time. With a staff of 350, the plant has an annual sugar production capacity of 400,000t from 3m tonnes of beet supplied by 720 growers.Ìý

"It's not only sugar the site produces, however," explained Andy Dilks, senior operations manager.ÌýÌý

"Further integrated facilities include an ethanol production plant and a combined heat and power plant that generates steam for the factory and enough electric to power a town the size of nearby Kings Lynn - although it goes into the National Grid. Heat and power produced by an on-site combined heat and power plant are utilised by an adjacent 18ha pharmaceutical crops glasshouse, while industrial gases supplier also has a plant on the site which captures all CO2 produced by the on-site ethanol plant, opened in 2007 and the UK's first such facility, now producing 75m litres annually.Ìý

With around 900 loads a day from Monday to Friday and 500 on Saturdays, some 5,000 lorries arrive at Wissington each week at the height of each campaign, with 27-28t of beet aboard, equating to 138,000t weekly. Some 35 per centÌýare sampled, with a 120kg sample taken from each lorry, from which a 20kg small sample is selected. The beet is first transferred into a water flume for cleaning, with any stones removed, washed and sold. Soil is transferred into settlement ponds, where it is dried naturally over time before being conditioned and sold, joining the Limex by-product of the sugar production process as part of British Sugar's range of ‘co-products'. Washing water is cleaned to a standard sufficient for discharge.Ìý

ÌýOngoing research

A further area of ongoing research to help maximise production efficiency is the best slice or ‘cossette' shape and dimensions at the next stage of the process, beet slicing. If they are too thick, water volume and temperature will both need to be higher in order to begin the juice extraction and crystallisation processes. Too thin, and the slices may break up too promptly during processing.