Virent Energy Systems has built a demonstration plant that can turn beet sugar into gasoline at a rate of 10, 000 gallons per year.
On rural roads, sugar-mill workers sit next to bags of beet sugar they have received in lieu of wages, hoping to barter their product for food or cash.
The price of domestic sugar is going up, thanks to a recent federal district court ruling that threatens to severely limit the supply of genetically modified beet sugar, which accounts for some 95% of all planted sugar in the United States.
FORBES: Anti-Biotech Activists' Court Win Is Loss for Farmers, Consumers
Sugar beet farming is a multimillion-dollar business in Oregon, Wyoming and Montana.
America subsidises growers and processors of sugar cane and sugar beet.
The herbicide-resistant alfalfa and sugar beet seeds under attack by activists are just the beginning of what will be necessary to feed a growing world: The U.N.
But much of the open water where they gather has iced up and the discarded sugar beet tops they graze on in surrounding fields are frozen over.
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The genetically engineered alfalfa and sugar beet seeds currently being withheld from growers are both "Roundup ready, " which means that the seeds have been genetically engineered to produce crops that can withstand the application of Roundup herbicide.
It is much easier for big western companies to deal with large agri-businesses, to which they can sell fertilisers and equipment in bulk, and from which they can buy vast quantities of grain, sugar beet and sunflower seed.
Some of the fringe activist groups opposed to genetic engineering have an anti-science, anti-technology, anti-business agenda, but given the environmental advantages of Roundup-ready seeds it's puzzling that a group like the Sierra Club, one of the co-plaintiffs in the alfalfa and sugar beet litigation, is working so hard to keep the seeds off the market.
Groningen is a pleasant place, with an old university, but its claims to fame do not extend to much beyond the industrial processing of sugar-beet and a glorious 15th-century tower.
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