American Crystal’s East Grand Forks factory celebrates 100 harvests

From Agweek, Bailey, A. (2026, October 27). American Crystal’s East Grand Forks factory celebrates 100 harvests. http://agweek.com/news/sugarbeet/american-crystals-east-grand-forks-factory-celebrates-100-harvests

EAST GRAND FORKS, Minn. — An entrepreneurial spirit and the old-fashioned work ethic of sugarbeet farmers built the foundation for the American Crystal Sugar Co. East Grand Forks factory and sustains it 100 years later.

The factory, which opened in 1926, is the company’s oldest, constructed by American Beet Sugar Co. several years after Polk County, Minnesota, farmers began growing sugarbeets.

Carl Wigand is credited as being one of the pioneers in the sugarbeet industry, raising 5 acres of test sugarbeets in 1918 and 1919 for the Minnesota Sugar Co. in Chaska, Minnesota, according to Edmund Gudmundson in a 2001 interview published by the Minnesota State University Moorhead Heritage Education Commission.

The sugarbeets in Wigand’s test plots were “of decent size and sugar content,” so Minnesota Sugar Co. encouraged other farmers to grow small acreages of the crop and ship them to Chaska, Gudmundson said in the interview with the Heritage Education Commission.

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