Lazy Farmers Don't Grow Sugar Beets

Ask almost anyone where sugar comes from and they’ll probably tell you the sugar cane. Obviously, they are not wrong. In fact, not until the 19th century did alternate sources of sugar become known.

One of these was the humble sugar beet, or Beta vulgaris. If you’ve ever worked a physically taxing job, multiply that effort by fifty and you’ll begin to grasp the difficulty of getting a sugar beet from seed to processing plant.

If you were a child of a migrant worker during the first half of the 20th century, you might be all too familiar with the whole process as you were forced to work alongside the adults in your family. Though it got you out of school by the end of April, you’d feel giddy to return in October after harvest. Long days in a hot field, bending over the entire time whether planting, thinning, weeding, or harvesting, would make a day in the classroom feel like a piece of cake.

Cake for which the world needed its sugar.

Each multi-germ seed was a tiny pod containing five or six separate beet plants. Once planting by hand was complete, it was time to thin the plants. Workers, on hands and knees, had to carefully pull out all but one tiny seedling without damaging the one left to grow. Monogerm seeds were not developed for use until 1967 and became the biggest breakthrough for this challenging industry.

Harvesting proved no easier. Many a finger was lost to the sinister-looking sugar beet knife, which came to North America with German and Russian immigrants. Here in Manitoba, farmers from across the southern half of the province manually unloaded their sugar beets into train cars which transported them to the Manitoba Sugar refinery in Winnipeg.

During World War II when cane sugar became difficult to import and rationing went into effect, the sugar beet industry thrived despite the intensive labor required. Among the laborers were many Japanese Canadians, relocated from their homes along the west coast to farms on the prairies to fill the gap left by young men off fighting the war. The industry would not have survived without the help of First Nations laborers, German prisoners of war, and the interned Japanese.

Though sugar beet farming eventually grew easier with the advancement of machinery, seeds, and irrigation systems, demand diminished as more economic and efficient sources of sugar took over.

The characters in my new novel, Rose Among Thornes, are subjected to the rigors of sugar beet farming during WWII. Much of my research came from a book called Sugar Farmers of Manitoba by Heather Robertson, loaned to me by Kelly and Cheryl Ronald who farm east of Portage la Prairie. Kelly used to raise sugar beets like his father before him. Bill Ronald served as president of the Manitoba Beet Growers’ Association.

One aspect I love about being a writer of historical fiction is how, every time I learn more about life in the 1940’s, I’m more grateful for modern-day conveniences. These hot summer days, I feel privileged to sit on a comfy chair in my air-conditioned home, describing for you the challenges of backbreaking work—as though I’d experienced it myself. While I hope we’re all learning to consume less sugar, I hope we’re also learning to appreciate the effort and history behind all the many, easy treats we enjoy.

Happy Labor Day!