Ask Professor Produce

What's the difference between a beet and a sugar beet? Or are they the same thing? -- Fiona, New Ulm

No, sugar beets and red beets are not the same thing. They both derive from the sea beet, originally (as does Swiss chard), but beets, which are deep-red in color, are used in borscht, pickled beets, rubesalats, etc., while sugar beets, which are dull white or gray, are used for sugar extraction.

I can sense that you're absolutely burning with desire, Fiona, to know how beets of any kind were ever chosen for sugar extraction.

Well. In 1747, the Prussian chemist, Andreas Marggraf, was the first to extract sugar from beets. He simply published his findings, while Marggraf's student, Franz Carl Achard, later hybridized the first sugar beet for extraction. King Freder ick William IV of Prussia saw such potential in the new method that he built the first sugar beet extraction factory. When Napoleon sacked Prussia a few years later, however, beet sugar production was put on hold.

It was Lord Nelson's victory against Napoleon's fleet at Trafalgar, of course, that ensured the birth of a true sugar beet industry.

How? Well, the blockade, which England's fleets maintained against France during the Napoleonic Wars, disrupted the French cane sugar trade out of the Caribbean so badly that Napoleon was forced to consider the Prussian sugar beet method in order to provide his sweet-toothed nation with sugar. He liked the "Achard method" so much that, in 1811, Napoleon declared that France could do away with all international sugar trade.

"I am informed that from recent experiments," decreed Bonaparte, "France will be able to do without sugar from the [West] Indies. Chemistry has made such progress in this country that it will be possible to produce as great a change in our commercial relations as that produced by the discovery of the compass..."

In short: "We got the beet."

Think of it. Had Lord Nelson failed his country at Trafalgar, the English blockade would have cracked, France would have regained control of its sugar trade, and the sugar beet would never have been called into service for its country.

Today, as a result, beet sugar accounts for 30% of the world's sugar production, and North Dakota accounts for 15% of total U.S. beet sugar production.

So, say thanks to Lord Nelson, Fargo!