From U.S. Sugar Corporation:
Clewiston, FL – October 1, 2014– U.S. Sugar’s 84th annual sugarcane harvest, scheduled to begin Tuesday evening, was delayed until mid-afternoon Wednesday, October 1st and got off to an extremely slow and soggy start due to excessive rainfall.
“More than a week of rain dumped nearly eight inches across the farming area, with standing water in many of our fields, said Judy Sanchez, senior director, corporate communications and public affairs. “The wet conditions will slow and hamper harvest activities until the weather clears up.”
Harvest began Wednesday shortly after 2 p.m. on a limited basis in Palm Beach County, with no harvest activities in Hendry or Glades counties due to wet conditions. The Clewiston Sugar Factory began processing the first railcars of sugarcane at 6:36 p.m. Wednesday evening. Both harvesting and processing operations will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the 2014-15 harvest season. The harvest season is expected to run until early April 2015.
“We’ve had good weather for most of this growing season and are expecting a good crop,” said Judy Sanchez. “Unfortunately, sugar prices have been severely depressed for the last few years due to a surge of unneeded, subsidized Mexican sugar into our marketplace. Over two million tons of subsidized Mexican sugar has flooded the U.S. markets, a significant portion of it produced at Mexican government- owned facilities.”
Sanchez said that U.S. Sugar had sold all of its 2014-15 sugar at lower prices caused by the flood of subsidized Mexican imports and would have to rely on volume and efficiencies during the harvesting, milling and refining process to retain profitability during this crop.
U.S. Sugar and its independent growers are projected to produce approximately 7.23 million tons of sugarcane with approximately 6.5 million tons of sugarcane to be processed at the Clewiston Sugar Factory that is projected to produce approximately 743,403 tons of raw sugar. Through the acquisitions of Duda in 2012 and, more recently, Knight Management, U.S. Sugar also will be sending sugarcane to all three of the other sugar factories in the Glades this year.
Sanchez noted that U.S. Sugar’s 2013-2014 sugarcane crop produced 759,378 tons of sugar, nearly 40 million gallons of molasses and 192,563 MW-hrs of electricity.
“While Florida sugar farmers are busy gearing up for the harvest season, we are also continuing our partnership in Everglades restoration by cleaning the water on the farms every single day,” Sanchez said.
“Our on-farm clean up measures, called Best Management Practices (BMPs), have reduced the phosphorus in water leaving the farms by 63% this year. That’s more than twice the 25% requirement, and farmers have averaged a 55% reduction for nearly 20 years,” said Sanchez.
“That’s a good job by the farmers and great news for the Everglades,” Sanchez said.