A Question for Cane Farmers on Cold Tolerance

quote:

---

Doesn’t sugar cane need two season’s?

---

In Louisiana I believe the seed cane is planted in the fall and harvested the next year. After that you get one or more years of regrowth (stubble) that you don’t have to replant. How many years depends on how well it weathers I think.

The John Deere double row cane harvester is the most expensive piece of equipment they sell.

quote:

---

The northern line is basically Rapides and Avoyelles Parish

---

I think my back yard it the literal line. If there is any North of Bayou Robert, I don't know where it is.

It’s not about how much cane the farmer can handle cutting it’s about how much cane the mill can take in from said farmer. Farmers are almost always on quotas of how many tons they can send to the mill daily. Mill has to appease all farmers.

quote:

---

Pretty sure it was even worse a while back when cane was transported in larger sizes. When the Meeker mill closed, cane pretty much disappeared in CENLA.

---

What was the deal with that mill? Poor management? It sounds like everyone that I’ve talked to around that area would grow cane if they had the milling.

quote:

---

What was the deal with that mill? Poor management?

---

I really don't know.

That machine works hard in a leafy environment resulting in build up of combustable stuff all over the machine. I have seen a couple catch fire and self-destruct

quote:

---

cane is at its northern limits.

---

Current northern limits. It wasn’t that long ago that many would have laughed at the idea of Avoyelles (and even Concordia, briefly) growing cane, but it’s happened.

I think we’ve just got a logistics problem, personally. I’m aware of the soil situation. As long as it’s alluvial and not loess it’ll be up to the challenge. I’m sure a freak frost can and would happen occasionally, but according to the hardiness/climate maps I’ve looked at cane could certainly be pushed farther north.

The sugarcane mills are the bottleneck. As stated, farmers each have a quota so more-or-less each farm finishes it's harvest about the same time.

The earlier you cut the cane, the less sweet it is. When they start in September, the sugarcane is still actively growing so the sucrose in the plant is low. As temperatures fall and days get shorter, the cane stops growing as fast and stores more sugar to make it through the winter. Sugar yields increase as winter approaches. A light freeze can really help the sugar yields as the cane stops growing completely and everything goes to sugar storage. But a hard freeze will kill the plant (sugar cane is a tropical plant) and while it will get real sweet for a time, after 1-3 weeks, the stalks actually spoil, and the crop is lost. Hard freezes before December are rare in South Louisiana. I guess that changes around Avoyelles Parish. I dunno.

Farmers will actually spray some fields with dilute Roundup (called pollada) just prior to harvest to get the sugar yield up. No surfactant though. It has the same affect as a light freeze.

The Sugar Industry would not exist in the US if not for government subsidies. American farmers could not stay in business if they had to trade their product on the world market.