Working on an eastern North Dakota diversified smalls grains and row crop farm during high school planted in Mark Anfinrud an interest in agriculture that grew into a career in the sugarbeet industry that spanned the United States.
During his career Anfinrud’s work in the beet industry included screening a variety of positions, including screening germplasm, for a private sugarbeet company and managing the U.S. Department of Agriculture's seed quality laboratory and assisting with its seed production.
Anfinrud has been surrounded by agriculture his entire life, growing up in North Dakota small towns encircled by fields, then attending North Dakota State University in Fargo and choosing an agriculture-related major.
His interest was piqued at a young age. He recalled during a presentation at the International Sugarbeet Institue held in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in March how, at a young age, he rode along with his father, Arlyn Anfinrud, a pastor whose hobby was photography, when he took pictures of sugarbeet fields in northeast North Dakota.
Born in Grafton, North Dakota, Anfinrud lived with his family in nearby St. Thomas, North Dakota, where his father served rural churches until the mid-1960s, when he accepted a position at a Lutheran church in Aneta, North Dakota, about 90 miles south of St. Thomas.
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While the family was living in Aneta, Anfinrud began working on the family farm of his best friends David Huso and Nathan Huso . Working with them and their father, Oscar, who owned the farm, gave him hands-on experience in the field.
Anfinrud learned about flax, wheat, sunflower, and barley production and how to chop corn for silage to feed Huso’s 700-head cattle herd.
After he graduated from Aneta High School in 1975, he enrolled at North Dakota State University in Fargo, where a lightbulb went off in his head during an agronomy class, bringing into focus the career he should pursue.
“It was like 'This was what I was spending my summers doing. This is where I need to go,'” Anfinrud said. “It was then I knew what I wanted.”
He earned a bachelor’s degree in agronomy from North Dakota State University in 1979 and a master’s degree in agronomy in 1981.
Anfinrud began working in the sugarbeet industry in 1986 for Interstate Seed, which eventually became SESVanderHave.
In 1989, when Anfinrud was testing sugarbeet seed varieties for SESVanderHave, he screened a variety from Holland that topped his yield trials. The variety 66156 yielded 12% higher in his trials and placed first in American Crystal Sugar Co. trials in 1990, second in 1991 and first in 1992.
That finding sealed Anfinrud's decision to work in the sugarbeet industry developing new seed varieties. He spent more than 30 years in the industry, besides screening germplasm, managing U.S. product lines.
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“I was involved in pretty much every aspect of the business,” he said. He also served on the West Coast Beet Seed Company board of directors in Salem, Oregon, for 10 years.
Anfinrud retired from SESVanderHave at the end of December 2023 and started a part-time job with the USDA sugarbeet research program in Fargo, North Dakota, in February 2024. Part of his duties will be mentoring young researchers.
During his career Anfinrud witnessed collaboration between federal, state and local sugarbeet factory district agronomists, the private industry and public universities and farmers that have resulted in improved seed varieties and better disease and insect control that benefited the sugarbeet industry in the form of fungicides to control sugarbeet diseases such as rhizoctonia, cercospora leaf spot and rhizomania.
The development of Roundup Ready sugarbeet varieties , which reduced the number of times farmers had to spray their crops for weeds during the growing season, was the most significant advancement made during Anfinrud’s career.
“I would say Roundup Ready sugarbeets would have been the game changer,” he said.
Using larger equipment to seed the crop, such as 24-row planters and semi-tractor trailers instead of tandem trucks to haul it at harvest, also has been a boon to the industry, saving time and trips across the field.
Meanwhile, sugarbeet factories have increased their slicing capacity and developed ventilated piles, storage methods that keep the crop from spoiling during warm winter weather.
Though there have been many advances in sugarbeet production, production challenges remain that Anfinrud hopes future research will answer.
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“How can we get a healthy start in a warm, wet spring?” Anfinrud asked.”Can we identify aspects of soil health that can reduce plant pathogens’ activity? I don’t know.”
Anfinrud believes that soil may yield answers to some fertility and disease control issues. For example, the soil contains micronutrients and macronutrients as well as bacteria and mycotoxins.
"There are so many things we don’t know. Those are areas we can potentially do something that will help on many fronts," he said.
“Who knows what the future holds, digging deeper into soil analysis?” he asked.
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