The plume of steam visible across much of the Treasure Valley signals that the sugar beet processing season is in full swing at the grower-owned Amalgamated Sugar Co. plant in Nampa.

Behind the plant's red brick walls and in the shadow of its towering smokestack, more than 500 workers — from the chemists in the lab checking the sugar content of newly arrived beets, to warehouse workers loading the finished product onto trucks — turn the dirty gray, lumpy root vegetables into pure white sugar sold in stores and used in candy and pastries.

Sugar beets don't get much respect. Consumers know cane sugar, not realizing that half of America's sugar comes from beets, though the two taste the same. The sour odor from Amalgamated's plant was a source of Nampans' complaints for years. And you won't see a sugar beet on any Idaho license plates or glossy brochures promoting Idaho's ag industry. If you've seen a sugsar beet, you know why.

But for Idaho sugar-beet farmers, who make a living growing the temperamental vegetable, the beet is a thing of beauty. And thanks to a resurgence in prices the past two years, it is a path to prosperity. What's more, the plant smell is much improved since a $16 million upgrade in December.

"It's a good crop and one you can always count on to get your money," said Drew Eggers, 54, who for more than 20 years has raised sugar beets on 140 acres west of Meridian.

According to projections from the University of Idaho, the 2006 sugar beet crop is estimated to be worth $218 million — a 22 percent increase from 2005. Last year, growers averaged payments that were in the low $40s per ton. Amalgamated Sugar Co. CEO Dick Jaro said the market has softened, but farmers still expect a "reasonably good year."

The lowly beet is Idaho's fourth-largest crop based on revenue, behind potatoes, hay and wheat. There were 30,000 acres of sugar beets planted in southwest Idaho in 2005 and 167,000 acres statewide, according to the State Department of Agriculture.

The industry employs more than 4,000 directly and more than 6,000 indirectly through suppliers and services. In Nampa, Amalgamated Sugar's payroll is $16 million. The company estimates it pays $6 million a year to local businesses for services and supplies.

"It's the most stable industry we've had in the city," said Nampa Mayor Tom Dale.

Amalgamated Sugar, on Karcher Road, puts the statewide economic impact of its industry at $1.1 billion.

"This is one of the really good crops that Idaho grows," said Garth Taylor, an ag economist with the University of Idaho. "Because the beets are processed in Idaho, it gives the economy a big oomph."

From seed to sugar
Beets grow from Oregon to east of Burley, mostly along the Snake River Plain. Beets are a thirsty crop, and the river provides much of their water.

Eggers farms his beets south of Interstate 84 between Ten Mile and Black Cat roads. Black Cat Road is named for his grandfather Chester's Black Cat farm, established on 80 acres in the 1920s.

Most beets are harvested in October and early November and trucked to the Nampa plant in large two-trailer semi-trucks. Up to 400 trucks arrive daily at the plant, bringing an estimated 12,000 tons a day.

After the harvest, Eggers tills his fields adding fertilizer to prepare for spring planting. In December, he orders seeds. Around mid-March, it's time to plant.

For the next several weeks, Eggers will wait for seedlings to emerge, hoping there won't be a late-season frost that could kill the beets and force him to replant.

"The first thing you do in the morning when you wake up is look at the thermometer," Eggers said. "If it's 28 or less, your heart kind of sinks."

Eggers says frost has killed his beets about 15 percent of the time. He could plant later in the spring and avoid the frost, but that would reduce his yield. Most growers buy insurance to protect themselves when frost kills a crop, but that doesn't reduce the stress.

"Before you get them cultivated you'll tear your hair out," Eggers said.

Eggers said growers make several applications of herbicides to keep weeds down until the plants are large enough to choke most weeds out.

Throughout summer, Eggers will try to water his crop every 10 days. If all goes well, he'll stop watering the beets in mid-September and in early October start the harvest.

Sugar beets aren't Eggers' only crop. His main crop is mint.

Back at the factory
Processing at the Nampa plant and Amalgamated Sugar's two other plants in Twin Falls and Paul will end in mid-February.

Built in 1942, the Nampa plant has been turning beets into sugar for more than 60 years. In the early years, the process involved more hands-on labor.

"It was lots of pitchforks and shovels," said plant manager Kent Quinney, who has been with the company for 22 years.

Today, workers in control rooms monitor the automated sugar-making process on computers and video screens.

Once the beets arrive on a conveyer belt, they are washed and sliced into thin strips that look like rippled potato chips. They then bathe in hot water to extract the sugar. Each beet contains about 17 percent sugar. The rest is water and pulp.

After the bath, a raw sugary juice is purified with lime and carbon dioxide, then filtered and concentrated.

The liquid is evaporated further, and the sugar crystallizes. The crystals are then separated from the juice in high-speed centrifuges.

The sugar is then washed, dried and stored for bagging. It takes about 10 hours to transform a beet into sugar.

Very little of the beet is wasted. Even the pulp is dried and sold as livestock food.

The Nampa plant produces 2 million pounds of sugar a day.

"We make as much sugar in an hour as we used to make in a day in 1942," Quinney said.

The sugar beet future
Sugar beets have been a major crop in Idaho for more than a hundred years. Amalgamated was founded in 1897.

Unlike some crops, sugar beets are not subsidized by the federal government, so prices depend solely on supply and demand and how much foreign sugar is allowed into the market.

To maintain price and market stability, sugar production is regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Each year the USDA predicts the coming year's demand for sugar and factors in how much sugar must be imported to satisfy trade agreements — 16.5 percent today. Then it tells producers how much they can sell.

Eggers said much of the recent price increase has been offset by higher production costs, including the skyrocketing costs for diesel fuel used in farm machinery.

"I think farming in general is struggling with the same things facing sugar beet producers," Eggers said. "Our margins are still shrinking, and our costs of production are going up."

Growers also face increased pressure from foreign sugar as a result of trade deals like the Central America Free Trade Agreement that went into effect last year.

When CAFTA was negotiated, Idaho's congressional delegation argued that it could spell the end of Idaho's sugar beet industry. But Amalgamated's Jaro now says the industry should survive.

Phillip Hayes, a spokesman for the American Sugar Alliance, said a more pressing problem is a requirement of the North American Free Trade Agreement to open the borders of Mexico for free trade in sugar next Jan. 1. Hayes said U.S. sugar producers would like to sell sugar to Mexico, but the country has blocked imports while still wanting to export its product.

For Eggers, it isn't foreign competition that poses the biggest challenge. It's the rapid growth in the Valley.

Sugar beet acreage remains steady despite development because growers are obligated to plant a certain number of acres to provide enough beets for processing.

If a grower wants out, he must first find a buyer for his Amalgamated shares. As the Treasure Valley sprouts houses and stores, beet acreage is displaced but not reduced.

Twenty years ago, Eggers said he would actively fight the expansion of subdivisions into farm land, but now he said he's learned to accept it.

Some of the land he rents to farm near the proposed Ten Mile Road interchange is already slated for development. Neither of his daughters plans to continue the family farm.

"When the city limits start coming out toward you, it changes the use of the ground, and that's just a fact of life in this Valley," he said. "I may be the last Eggers to make a full-time living farming."