January 4, 2016
Sugaronline | http://goo.gl/U5cUHx
Frequent rain and muddy conditions made the closing sugar-cane harvesting season a rough one for area farmers and mill operators, according to Louisiana's Thibodaux Daily Comet newspaper.
"It was a bad grind because of all the mud," said Bobby Gravois, a sugar-cane farmer in Thibodaux.
While the first two weeks of the season were dry, heavy rains came Oct. 24 and continued throughout the season leaving little chance for fields to dry.
"As you can see, we're breaking up all our equipment in the field and cutting up all of the fields for the next year," Gravois said today, pointing to deep ruts in one of his fields. "After grinding, we've got to clean up with shovels to actually let the water out."
Mud is also a challenge for the raw sugar factories tasked with filtering it from the cash crop.
"As it comes in with cane we have to process it in the factory, so it takes a little more effort. It's a little more wear and tear on the equipment," said Ben LeBlanc, field manager at Thibodaux's Lafourche Sugars Corp. "And it also comes in with no sugar and leaves with a little bit, so it reduces our ability to recover the sugar from the sugar cane."
Lafourche Sugars Corp. stopped grinding Monday, about five days longer than usual because of the muddy conditions, while Raceland Raw Sugar Corp. is still grinding.
Herman Waguespack Jr., senior agronomist with the Thibodaux-based American Sugar Cane League, said this season's yield will probably be average to below average.
"Statewide it will probably be average, but it could have been so much better if we hadn't had to deal with the mud," he said. "The good thing about it is that we haven't had a freeze so we haven't had to contend with any freezing weather and cold conditions."
Waguespack said some cane in Lafourche Parish is already starting to flower because of the warm temperatures.
"That's probably not a good thing," he said. "Instead of using its energy to store sugar, it uses that sugar or that energy to make a flower so it lowers the sugar content in the cane."
As the grinding season wraps up, Gravois urged drivers to be careful around muddy fields where trucks are still operating.
"Ask the public to drive safe," he said. "It's slippery."