Salute to Idaho Agriculture: U of I Sugar Beet Conference

BURLEY, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — The annual University of Idaho Snake River sugar beet conference took place Wednesday at the Burley Convention Center, and it is the focus of this week’s Salute to Idaho Agriculture.

The University of Idaho has held the Snake River sugar beet conference for a number of years now and the focus of the 2023 conference was mitigating weeds that are resistant to different herbicides.

U of I brought in professors and specialists from midwestern universities such as the Universities of Nebraska, Minnesota and North Dakota State University.

Nevin Lawrence one of six integrated weed management specialists in the world, and a professor at the University of Nebraska spoke about his area of expertise.

“I’ve been dealing with the weed species called Palmer Amaranth in sugar beets since 2016 in Western Nebraska, and that was recently found in parts of Idaho. And that can be a big problem for a lot of the producers here in Idaho and so I’m out here talking about my expertise and experience managing that weed,” Lawrence said.

Now that this species of weed is in Idaho the farmers in attendance learned methods to better fight against weed outbreaks. One Idaho farmer spoke about why he made the trip over to Burley.

“I come every year, this year I wanted to get the pesticide credit and it’s good to see if there’s anything new in the industry. It’s a great event that U of I puts on and Amalgamated Sugar and it’s good for the community and good for the industry,” said Clinton Bowen a sugar beet farmer from south of Burley.

If you missed this year’s beet conference you are unfortunately out of luck…

However, U of I is putting on an Ag Outlook Seminar in the Magic Valley next Wednesday at CSI.

This is not the same event as the beet conference, but it will be a place where farmers and those in the agriculture field can look to and learn more about the year ahead.

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