The 2024 sugar beet crop is all but finished harvesting. For farmer Luke Adams outside of Rupert, this season was good, and the end is welcome. Amalgamated Sugar will turn beets from farmers like Luke into 12% of the U.S.'s sugar. Luke Adams grew up in a beet-farming family north of Rupert. In 2012 he took over the lead role and grows 1600 acres of beets each year. Adams is a member-owner of Amalgamated Sugar, a grower-owned sugar cooperative that produces 2.2 billion pounds of sugar annually. Reporter Lorien Nettleton rode along with Adams on their final day of harvest, pulling the last 45 acres of the year.(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story.)Pulling the last of this year's beets out of the ground is a good feeling for farmers like Luke Adams."Yeah, we're really excited and the crew's been feeling great," Adams told me.I rode along with Adams and his crew as they harvested the last 45 of their 1600 acres of beets grown this year. It's been a busy season to get to this point."A lot of hours going into it when you're doing, you know 15, 16 hours a day six days a week, it adds up after a month," Adams said.Like many beet farmers in the Magic Valley, Adams grew up picking rocks and setting irrigation for his parents.His grandparents first homesteaded 5 miles south of here in the 1950s, and his parents ran the operation until 2012."My family has always grown beets since the '80s," Adams said. "So I have a big place in my heart for beets. I love the fact it's a cooperative, it's a grower-owned cooperative and so it gives you just a little bit more pride and ownership in that crop. We know that in the end, we're going to sell that sugar."From here, the beets head to the Adelaide Receiving Station, one of dozens of massive piles of beets for amalgamated sugar."Our capacity here is 280,000 tons of sugar beets, so on any given year there are between eight and 10,000 acres that are contracted here," agronomist Bryce Dayton told me.This is Dayton's tenth harvest with Amalgamated Sugar."I grew up in this area, my grandfather raised sugar beets," Dayton said. "I remember riding in the beach truck with my dad when I was five years old."With 300 pounds of sugar for every ton of beets, this pile represents a lot of Pepsi and Hershey's chocolate, and more. Amalgamated Sugar supplies 12 percent of the sugar used in the United States."This is a very good feeling," Dayton said. "There's a reason that I'm smiling. I mean, it's a completion of a successful crop and it's good to see wind down.""Knowing that this is going end up being in the cake mix for the birthday, or in the Gatorade for the kid playing high school sports I mean I just think it's a fun job, and I love doing it," Adams said, "I love that I get to be part of ag, and spend my time farming, I love it."