The sugar beet used to be a legend in Utah. In fact, it has the honor of being Utah's official Historic State Vegetable. What happened to this promising crop and blossoming industry in Utah?

I remember my dad telling me stories of working on the sugar beet farms in northern Utah. He spent long hours thinning and topping off the sugar beets with his uncles. As he told me these stories, I thought I was misunderstanding. Was he talking about a trip to another country? Or was it some other crop? I wondered this because, as I have traveled this great state of ours, I have not recognized a sugar beet field or seen many sugar factories.

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Well, he was not mistaken—the sugar beet used to be big business in Utah. In fact, Lehi was the first city in the US to have a sugar beet processing plant with local machinery. Farmers liked sugar beets because they could feed the extras to their animals, and with the droppings of the animals on their fields, the crop didn't deplete the soil.

Read More: Utah’s Most Valuable Export Crop Is Not For You

The idea of cultivating sugar beets started in the 1850s. With some trial and error, they finally proved that the crop could be grown profitably by the 1880s. This started a boom in the industry, with sugar factories opening all over the state. So, what happened? Why aren't we known as the Sugar Beet State?

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Needs shifted, and manufacturers started looking at crops grown outside of Utah. Also, cheaper sugar cane crops flooded our markets. Sugar beets had never been an ideal crop: the soil is too alkaline, the growing season too short, and the labor too intensive. The fact that Utah enjoyed nearly a century of sweet success is a testament to the stubborn self-sufficiency of Utah’s farmers. By the 1980s, all of the factories of our historic state vegetable had shut down, and the sugar beet industry became nothing more than stories—some of which were passed down to me by my dad.

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