Here’s how much California’s sugar beet business has imploded

October 21, 2025

Not such sweet news about sugar

With our sugar consumption likely to rise with Halloween candy piling up, we look at the history of sugar and why California’s last sugar beet plant is leaving the state.

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The last sugar beat factory in California is closing and the poorest county in the state is taking a huge hit. On Sept. 9, Imperial County leaders declared a state of economic emergency in response to the closure of the Spreckels Sugar Co. plant in Brawley. In April, the plant’s owner (Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative) announced the plant closure would come at the end of the processing year and move operations to Minnesota after March.

You can read the full press release from the SMBSC here.

Supervisor Peggy Price, whose district includes the Spreckels plant, cited some of the losses as 249 full-time jobs, $16.7 million in payroll and $28 million in annual economic activity. A news release by the Spreckels Sugar Co. in April said, “This decision comes after a thorough evaluation of the long-term financial and operational challenges facing the facility as well as an assessment of the economic challenges and uncertainty facing the sugar industry that have been building for several years.”

Sugar and California

The use of beets to refine for sugar started in Germany in the 1790s. The first attempts grown beets in the U.S. in the 1830s but the experiments did not have success. The California Beet Sugar Co. in Alvarado was the first successful sugar beet factory in the U.S. in 1870. But it had ups and downs. Successful commercial production did not take off until the 1890s in California. In 1917, there were 15 beet processing plants in California processing 154,000 acres of beets and half of the acreage was in Orange County. By the 1950s, California and Colorado produced 50% of the nations beet sugar. There were plants with huge acreage in Spreckels (Salinas Valley), Chino, Oxnard, Hamilton City, Los Alamitos, Santa Ana and Betteravia to name a few.

Why go to Minnesota?

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the largest and most dynamic region for sugar beet production is in or close to the Red River Valley of western Minnesota and eastern North Dakota. The area planted in the Red River region increased consistently through the 1990s and into the 2000s and has accounted for the majority of total planted U.S. sugar beet acreage. Long, cold winters aid the storage of sugar beets harvested in October and allow the slicing of sugar beets well into the following spring, thereby making more efficient use of slicing capacity at the factories.

Processed sugar cane proceeded beet sugar by hundreds of years. When it comes to California’s sugary past, two companies stand out. The Spreckels company and the California and Hawaiian Refining Company, known as C&H. It will have the final refinery left in California after the Brawley plant shuts down. The C&H refinery in Crockett processes more than 700,000 tons of cane sugar annually. The cane sugar comes from Southeast Asia as the last shipments from Hawaii were in 2017.

Is sugar bad for us?

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, sugar is an umbrella term for many types of simple carbohydrates, including white table sugar. Also called sucrose, this is the most common sweetener used in sweet desserts and baked goods. Sugar isn’t inherently bad. Actually, it’s necessary: Our bodies run on sugar. The downside is that many people consume a large amount of added sugar that has no nutritional benefits. And too much added sugar can lead to health problems including high blood sugar, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, dental issues such as cavities, increased triglycerides, obesity and type 2 diabetes.

You can learn more about sugar and substitutes from Johns Hopkins Medicine here.

Cane and beets

Beet sugar comes from the root of the sugar beet plant, which grows in temperate climates. The beets are washed, sliced into strips called “cossettes,” and soaked in hot water to extract the sugar-rich juice. This process is highly efficient and requires a single refining step to produce pure white sugar.

Cane sugar comes from the stalk of the sugarcane plant, a tropical grass. The stalks are crushed to extract juice, which is boiled and crystallized.

Cash receipts for U.S. sugar growers vary with sugar yields and prices. Cash receipts for sugar beets were $1.18 billion in the 2019 crop year and $1.09 billion in 2020. Sugarcane cash receipts were $1 billion in the 2019 crop year and $1.16 billion in 2020. On average, the sugar crops account for less than 1% of the cash receipts received by U.S. farmers for all agricultural commodities.

Sugar beet (Beta vulgaris, L) is a biennial plant. In the first year, it produces an enlarged root, that stores sucrose that provides energy used to flower in the next season. About 35% of global sugar production and 50-55% of the domestic sugar production comes from sugar beets.

Lock it up

When sugar was first brought to England in the 1480s, it was so valuable people needed a locking safe to keep it. Back then, one pound of sugar was worth over $50 of 2025 dollars. Today sugar costs about 15 cents per pound.

Sources: California State Department of Education, Calexico Times, University of California Press “History of the Beet Sugar Industry in California” by Torsten A. Magnuson, USDA, Wyomingsugar.com, American, sugar.org, UC Davis, Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative