FARGO — Trucks are rolling, sugar beets are piling up, and the clock is ticking. Across the Red River Valley, farmers are racing both time and weather to bring in this year’s crop.

At American Crystal Sugar, the sugar beet harvest has started with a bang, with more than a million tons delivered in the first 24 hours.

“To get such a massive amount of volume in that 24-hour day, that’s a number that we like to see,” said Harrison Weber, executive director of the Red River Sugarbeet Growers Association.

But harvesting sugar beets isn’t just about effort — timing and weather play a critical role in crop quality.

“If you’re putting a too-warm beet or a too-cold beet into storage, it will break down very quickly, and we won’t be able to extract as much sugar out of those sugar beets,” Weber

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