Costs of sugar beet production – Comparison of selected EU-regions

The article deals with the costs of sugar beet production in selected regions of the EU and the potential to decrease them. The average beet acreage and plot sizes of the English, French, Northern and Eastern German production regions are above EU average resulting in low fixed machine and labour costs per unit area. As the predominant part of the beet harvest takes place with multi-row harvesters, in some of these regions the potential for cost reduction is already exhausted. Production areas and plot sizes below average are to be found in Southern Germany and Italy where sugar beet production is charged with higher costs. However, empiric findings indicate that these structural disadvantages are increasingly overcome by use of multi-row harvesters in shared or contractors’ property.