DENVER (AP) - Sugar beet farmers across four states including Wyoming expect to plant nearly one-third more acreage this year as prices rise in the wake of stronger demand and hurricane-related damage along the Gulf Coast.

Inder Mathur, chief executive officer of Western Sugar Cooperative, told The Denver Post in Friday's editions that his members will increase acreage by 25 percent and 30 percent this season. "We think demand is going to be there," he said this week.

The increased crop aided by good weather could boost Colorado production to 1 million tons this season for the first time in six years. It marks a rebound for farmers who have been coping with low prices, drought-related problems and oversupply in recent years.

Sugar supplies shrank after Hurricane Katrina damaged Louisiana sugar-cane facilities last fall. The price for refined U.S. beet sugar was 23.5 cents a pound in January 2005 compared with 34.5 cents a pound last month. It has fallen as Gulf Coast production gears up.

In addition, prices have been helped by a rising global demand for ethanol which can be produced from sugar as well as more consumer interest. "Frankly, people like to eat things that taste good," Mathur said.

The sugar-beet crop is planted in early spring with harvest in the fall. Growers are cooperative shareholders or are leasing growing rights from shareholders. The acreage planted is determined by cooperative members and is based on the number of shares a farmer controls.

In 1999, Colorado produced 1.46 million tons of sugar beets which was about 4 percent of the nation's total. Its production dropped to 644,000 tons four years later.

Based in Denver, the cooperative also has members in Wyoming, Nebraska and Montana. It operates processing plants at Fort Morgan and Greeley in Colorado; Scottsbluff, Neb.; Lovell and Torrington in Wyoming; and Billings, Mont.

On the Net: http://www.westernsugar.com/index.asp