The Swedish 2005 sugar beet harvest looks set to be average or slightly better thanks to early planting, beet farming and industry officials said on Wednesday. In the past decade Sweden's annual sugar beet crop has totalled around or just over 2.5 million tonnes. The 2004 harvest yielded some 18 percent and sugar production totalled about 450,000 tonnes, according to industry figures. "We've had a good start and prospects are good for a relatively normal harvest," said Christer Sperlingsson, head of the agriculture department at Danisco Sugar in Sweden.
The Danish sugar and food ingredients conglomerate processes Sweden's sugar output.
Stefan Lundmark, an agronomist at the Agriculture Society of Kristianstad, a major sugar beet growing region in south Sweden, said planting had gotten off to an early start.
"That's positive ... It looks as if we'll have at least a normal crop, maybe a bit better," he said.
The beet growing area in Sweden was steady at around 48,000 hectares but it was too early to say how the beets' sugar yields would develop, the officials said.
The average yield in Sweden has tended to be 17-17.5 percent, Sperlingsson said.
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