Growing Sugar Beets
Swiss yearly per capita consumption of sugar averages 40 kilograms. Domestic production covers about half the national demand. 7,500 farmers grow 16,000 hectares of sugar beets. Farmers who choose to cultivate this crop must apply for a sugar beet quota. Only those farmers having a quota can produce the allocated amount of sugar beets which the quota allows them to deliver. By road or rail, the harvest is transported to the sugar mills in Aarberg (Canton of Bern) or Frauenfeld (Canton of Thurgau), where the annual amount of approximately 140 million kilograms of sugar is extracted of the sugar beets.
