The sugar beet was named the historic state vegetable in the 2002 General Session of the Utah State Legislature. Senator Bill Wright (R-Elberta), sponsored  S.B. Bill 136 and it was supported by the students of Realms of Inquiry Private School of Salt Lake City (Utah Code). The Spanish sweet onion is the Utah State Vegetable.

Students of the Realms of Inquiry School, with the support of Representative Jackie Biskupski (D-Salt Lake City), strongly advocated for the sugar beet to be named Utah’s state vegetable. This led to a compromise with those who supported the Spanish sweet onion. The resulting bill designated the sugar beet as the historical state vegetable and the Spanish sweet onion as the contemporary state vegetable.

From The Springville Herald: 

Utah State University plant scientist Dan Drost, who spends a lot of time around onions and the people who grow them, was an onion fan long before the State Legislature got into the act. And what’s not to like. Onions store well, add loads of flavor, can be eaten cooked or raw and they’re good for you. “If the Legislature really needed to spend time selecting official state vegetables at least they chose one with some really good health benefits,” Drost said. “Sugar beets were imported here once, but we don’t grow them much anymore and sugar beets have no redeeming nutritive value. Choosing the sugar beet over the onion would just highlight the fact that people are enamored more with sugar and look where it’s gotten us?” 

The sugar beet is a root crop that is cultivated for its sugar. Beets are planted in late spring and harvested in early fall. A full-grown sugar beet is about a foot long, weighs two-to-five pounds, and is about 18% sucrose. Both sugar cane and sugar beets are processed to produce white sugar. Sugar cane is grown in warm, tropical climates. Sugar beets are grown in temperate climates. 

Utah achieved prominence in nineteenth-century America for its efforts to produce sugar from sugar beets; and the production of beet sugar contributed substantially to Utah’s economy for almost one hundred years. The Sugar House Neighborhood in Salt Lake City even received its name from the early pioneer days, when the area’s loamy soil was found to be ideal for growing sugar beets. A first bold attempt was made in the early 1850s but the factory never quite managed to solve the chemical problems of converting beets grown in alkali soil into granulated sugar. By the 1980s there were no beet sugar factories in Utah. The Utah History Encyclopedia has a thorough history of the sugar industry in Utah.

The Lehi factory of the Utah Sugar Company was the first successful beet sugar factory in the Mountain West, the first to use beets grown by irrigation, the first to have a systematic program for producing its own beet seed, the first to use American-made machinery, the first to use the “osmose process” of reprocessing molasses, and the first to build auxiliary cutting stations. This factory also served as a training base for many of the technical leaders of the sugar beet industry of the United States.

The onset of World War I and the expansion of sugar beet acreage brought about a shortage of laborers. The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company sought workers outside of the United States and hired families from Juarez, Mexico to work the fields in the Garland area. The people, their housing, schools, and social life are described in Mexican Families and the Sugar Industry in Garland.