MOORHEAD - American Crystal Sugar Co.'s pre-pile sugar beet harvest will be among the latest in the past 10 years, officials say.

The "pre-pile" harvest usually starts in the first week of September, but this year will start Sept. 13, company officials told growers Monday.

Pre-pile harvest is a time for starting up factories but not stockpiling beets in storage piles that must last through the winter and through the "slice campaign."

Shareholder-growers harvest a small percentage of their beets during the period, using the phase to open fields for the full-scale harvest - a round-the-clock, intense operation, which still is scheduled to start about Oct. 1.

"What's driving that startup is the slow crop progress," company spokesman Jeff Schweitzer said. Moorhead and Hillsboro factory districts have a more developed crop. "As we move north, it's been cooler, and they've had more frequent rains."

The starting date for pre-pile will be roughly 10 days later than most startups in the past 10 years. The earliest start-ups were Aug. 30, in both 1999 and 2000. In 2002, the company skipped the pre-pile all together, going directly to the full-scale harvest.

Schweitzer said there isn't a lot of risk in starting the pre-pile harvest later than usual.

The five-year average crop is about 19.5 tons per acre, and Crystal is projecting 18 tons per acre. Last year's crop averaged 20.2 tons. The company is projecting a 17.5 percent sugar average.

The outcome of the crop will depend greatly on September weather, Schweitzer said. That's when much of the sugar goes into the beet roots.

The co-op members planted about 500,000 acres and are projected to harvest about 495,000 acres. Earlier, farmers had replanted about 23,000 acres, which is about 5 percent, and not out of the ordinary. If all goes as projected, Crystal would finish its "slice" or beet processing campaign May 1, which is "within the target date we like to finish," which is May 15.

Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative of Wahpeton, N.D., will start its pre-pile harvest Sept. 8, said Tom Knudsen, vice president for agriculture.

"We usually like to skip Labor Day," Knudsen says.

Minn-Dak is expecting a yield of some 20 tons per acre, which is a "good recent average." It expects to harvest 105,000 of the 106,000 acres that were planted.

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