Sugarbeet growers and U.S. cooperatives are expected to have a stronger financial year ahead, thanks to improved production and higher crop prices predicted for 2020-2021. A CoBank report says that should help usher in a potential recovery from a stressful growing season last year. The report from CoBank’s Knowledge and Exchange Division details the market forces and production dynamics that suggest the sugar industry is in for a rebound as consumer demand for sugar remains high. “Assuming we return to reasonably normal harvest weather this fall, expectations are for a much bigger crop to be harvested for the 2020-2021 season,” says Tanner Ehmke, manager of CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange. “With processors contracting refined sugar at much-higher prices, fortunes are expected to turn favorable for growers and processors in the marketing year ahead.” Last fall, the U.S. sugarbeet harvest marked the fifth-biggest year-over-year decline on record, dropping 14 percent to 28.6 million short tons. Production in three of the biggest sugar-producing states of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska, fell by more than 20 percent in 2019. Abandonment rates were the highest in the U.S. since the Great Depression as 13.5 percent of planted acres weren’t harvested because of wet weather issues.