FARGO, N.D. — The Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association has honored Researchers Norm Cattanach and Mark Bloomquist with the Sugarbeet Distinguished Service award.
Cattanach, a North Dakota State University sugarbeet research specialist, and Bloomquist, Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative research director, received the awards at the annual American Crystal Sugar Co. Research and Reporting Session held in December 2021.
This is the second time during Cattanach’s long association with the sugarbeet industry that he has received the Distinguished Service award. The first was in 2000.
Cattanach’s career in sugarbeet research began in 1982 when he joined the North Dakota State University soil science department. During part of his career, Cattanach worked with then-soil scientist Joe Giles on a variety of sugarbeet research projects including seedbed preparation, tillage methods and residue management. Later, Cattanach collaborated with NDSU researchers Laura Overstreet and Amitva Chatterjee on projects.
Cattanach is best known in the Minnesota, North Dakota and eastern Montana sugarbeet industry for organizing and operating grower planter test stand clinics across the three states. He plans to retire in April.
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Bloomquist’s career in agriculture was launched in 1990 when he was hired as an agriculturalist at Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative in Renville, Minnesota. In 2008, he accepted a position at the cooperative as a production agronomist. As production agronomist, Bloomquist was responsible for a variety of agronomy projects, including Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative official variety trials. Bloomquist was named research director at the Renville cooperative and at Spreckels Sugar in Brawley, California, in 2015.
Bloomquist’s collaboration with Emma Burt, MinnDak Growers Cooperative research agronomist, and Tom Peters, NDSU Extension sugarbeet agronomist, helped secure an emergency exemption for Ultra Blazer . The exemption allowed farmers to use the post-emergence herbicide to control glysophosate-tolerant broadleaf weeds.
Bloomquist serves on the Sugarbeet Research and Education Board, American Society of Sugarbeet Technologists Board and the Minnesota Agricultural Fertilizer and Research and Education Council.
