The 2026-2027 campaign is under way. Cristal Union opened on 3 September at Fontaine-le-Dun, then at Sainte-Émilie on 17 September; in Picardy, sugar factories start between 24 September and 8 October. This is no ordinary campaign.
A historically low harvest
- 68.2 t/ha nationwide according to Agreste's first forecasts (15 September), down 24.5% year on year: one of the lowest yields since the early 2000s.
- 71.5 t/ha in Hauts-de-France (−22.5%), for an estimated national output of 25.4 million tonnes (−29%).
- Causes: drought and repeated heatwaves, pests and rhizopus. In Picardy, Action Agricole Picarde reported in early September roots weighing over 30% less than the five-year average, with the Oise department hit hardest, and a sugar content of about 21° inflated by dehydration.
- In that same area, the campaign is expected to last about 100 days, against the usual 120 to 130.
Why reception matters even more this year
Less tonnage means every delivery matters more. Stressed roots hit by rhizopus mean rot to watch for from the yard onwards, and trickier storage in clamps. A short campaign leaves little time to train seasonal staff. And with lower beet prices, every penalty point is debated.
Yet part of the inspection is still visual: counting beets with too many leaves, checking topping, spotting soil and damaged roots, by eye, day and night. Making that part measurable and identical for everyone, growers and factories alike, is what our demo is about.
Our demo, available online
From a top-down photo with suitable lighting, each root is outlined and counted, its surface is split into healthy flesh, cut, leaves, soil, damage and rot, and its mass is estimated from the folding ruler placed next to it. The batch is compared with adjustable thresholds, with a timestamped export. Results depend on shooting conditions and must be validated on the site's own batches.
Demo
Try the analysis on our examples or on your own photo
Works on desktop and mobile. The interface is in French. First load: about 115 MB, then cached.
Open the demo (interface in French)- Everything runs in your browser: no photo is sent to a server.
- On 20 photos from the public SemanticSugarBeets test set, kept separate from training by its authors: 62 roots, 62 counted. This test covers counting only; it does not measure the accuracy of surfaces or mass.
- The models come from research published at CVPR 2025 (Austrian Institute of Technology); in production they are retrained on the site's own photos.
What it is not
A replacement for standardised measurements: soil tare and sugar content are still measured as today, under the interprofessional agreement. The tool makes the visual part of the inspection objective, and it is most reliable at batch level: a photo only shows one side of each root.
Sugar factories, cooperatives, harvesting contractors: if you already archive reception photos, let's prepare an evaluation on them now, to be run at the right time for your campaign, without changing your process.
Sources
- Terre-net — Agreste : premières prévisions de rendements betteraviers 2026 (15/09/2026)
- Agra — Début de campagne chez Cristal Union, rendement en baisse de 25 %
- Action Agricole Picarde — Cristal Union démarre sa campagne avec moins de betteraves que prévu (09/09/2026)
- Action Agricole Picarde — 2026, l'année des extrêmes pour la betterave (03/09/2026)
- SemanticSugarBeets — Croonen et al., AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, CVPR 2025 Agriculture-Vision Workshop (modèles et images, licence CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)