FARGO, N.D. — If you're running equipment from the 1960s — a not unheard of thing on farms — you're going to have some breakdowns. And when you do, finding parts might be tough.
Tom Peters, Extension sugarbeet agronomist for North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota, explained that NDSU's research harvester for sugarbeets was built in the 1990s off of a Heston potato digger. No one is exactly sure how old the original digger was, though they think it was from the 1960s.
"One of the challenges that we have is, since it's 1960s vintage, we have a lot of challenges in finding parts for when we break down. And, by the way, we break down just like our growers do," Peters told a crowd at the International Sugar Beet Institute at the Fargodome in Fargo on March 19, 2025.
Going forward, the research team won't have to worry about looking for those parts, as NDSU at ISBI unveiled a new research harvester, built by Beamco with Amity Technology parts. The project has been in the works for about four years and should improve the harvest process for researchers.
Researchers harvest about 3,500 two row-by 30-foot plots annually. Operating the old research harvester was inefficient, Peters said.
"Today, we need nine people to harvest, and it's harder to find people, especially with all of the other things going on," he said. "So we think we can reduce the number of people from nine to four, so that'll be a tremendous improvement for us, and it's not really because we don't want to hire people. It's just we can't find people."
But one of the primary reasons for developing a new research harvester was simply to improve the quality of research.
"We wanted to improve our data quality. We wanted to get better numbers so we could provide better information back to our farmers," Peters said.
Peters said finding someone to complete the design and engineering work was difficult, as it has a lot of unique features that wouldn't be replicated on other machines, including the ability to haul it on a truck and trailer to various research locations. But while teaching a sugarbeet production class, he met Lily Bergman, who was, at the time, an engineering student at NDSU and worked at Amity Technology along with growing sugarbeets with her father, James Bergman. James Bergman owns Beamco, a small company located on a farm near Oslo, Minnesota, in the northern Red River Valley. Beamco agreed to take on the project.
The new harvester’s development and purchase has been a collaboration between NDSU, the University of Minnesota, the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, the Sugar Beet Research and Education board, growers and allied industry partners — which include seed companies, chemical companies, companies that provide services for farmers and equipment companies.
"They're all invested in this research because it just makes everybody better," Peters said after the ceremony. "Certainly the universities benefit, the growers benefit. But I think our equipment companies — allied industry — want to see our growers be successful, and so their investment is in this sustained, continuous improvement that growers have."
Several other speakers spoke at the ceremony, including Frank Casey, associate director of the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station.
"I'm glad to see that this has come across the finish line," he said. "This project is based upon four P's, I was thinking about this morning. One is perseverance. The second is partnerships. The third is providence. And the fourth is Peters — Dr. Tom Peters."
Casey lauded how all of the pieces fell into place to get the harvester designed, funded and built, and he led a round of applause for Peters, who he said deserves "a ton of accolades" in bringing all of it together.
Peters is looking forward to what is accomplished with the new equipment.
"It has been a true privilege and an honor to lead this effort. I'm excited about the opportunity to read about the research that we do in the next 10, 20, 30 years using this new equipment, and I can only imagine what's gonna happen maybe in the year 2050 or so when they start talking about the fourth version of this lifter," he said.