Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

By Stuart Reitz, The Argus Observer
October 9, 2016

The sugar beet harvest campaign will be cranking up here shortly. In fact, you may be seeing trucks hauling loads of beets down from our neighbors to the north, around La Grande and the Columbia Basin. Sugar beets are undoubtedly an important part of farming across the Pacific Northwest. However, we might not have this important industry today without some key inventions that have kept it going.

Inventions may be ones that create a need for themselves or ones that fill an actual need. The first type of invention is often slow to be adopted because people don’t view it as a necessity. Although the “modern” cellphone was invented in 1973, we managed to survive through the 1990s without them. Even as cellphones gained popularity in Europe during the mid-1990s, Americans remained hesitant to adopt them as we chuckled about who would ever need such a thing. Now look where we are. Other inventions spread like wildfire because they do meet a critical need.

The U.S. sugar beet industry has seen both ends of that spectrum. Through the early years of sugar beet production, American farmers were content to import seed from Europe. Although American scientists had invented methods to grow seed in the US, farmers stuck with imported varieties. During World War I, seeds had to be grown in America, because the war disrupted European supplies, and American farmers put those previously developed techniques for seed production to use. Yet after the war, American farmers reverted to their European seed sources.

What finally established sugar beet seed production in the U.S. was devastation brought about by beet curly top virus. This virus occurs throughout the western U.S. but not in Europe. Consequently, the European varieties were highly susceptible to it and the American crop was nearly wiped out during the 1920s from curly top epidemics.

American breeders developed varieties that were resistant to beet curly top and also better adapted to local environmental conditions than their European counterparts were, and farmers quickly adopted them. Breeders not only developed better varieties, but they also met the demand for seed by inventing a better system for growing seed plants in the U.S. than the system used in Europe.

Sugar beets, like onions, carrots and cabbages, are biennial plants. That is, it takes two growing seasons and a winter before plants flower and set seeds. The plants need a period of cool weather and long nights to induce flowering in the second spring. Europeans would sow seeds in the spring and dig up the beets in the fall to avoid harsh winter conditions. The roots would be placed in cold storage over the winter and transplanted in the spring to flower, with seeds harvested at the end of that second summer.

Scientists with the USDA and state universities developed new methods to grow seed plants in areas with mild winters. An ideal place for sugar beet seed production is the Willamette Valley. There, seeds can be sown in the fall. The winters are cool and dark enough to trigger flowering, but mild enough for plants to survive, In addition, the dry summers provide good harvest conditions. This overwinter method significantly cuts the time and cost of seed production. Most North American sugar beet seeds are now grown in the Willamette Valley, as are many other biennial crop seeds. Now as we begin the harvest campaign, farmers in the Willamette Valley are planting the future generation.

Stuart Reitz is a Malheur County Extension Office agent. The views and opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily represent those of The Argus Observer.

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