What Have You Been Up To?
Light rain at the beginning of the month delayed the harvest schedule because the soil was muddy when it rained and the cane harvester machines couldn’t get into the fields. But fortunately, the sky soon cleared, and the cane harvest began.
Less fortunately, the reduction in cane productivity is serious. Although we expected the loss it’s still disappointing. Some cane fields faced losses of up to 50%.
About one third of the crop has been harvested so far. The main force of this year’s sugarcane harvest is mechanical harvesters, not hand cutting. One consolation is that the oil price has dropped by 1,070 yuan per ton. Machine harvest advantages and disadvantages coexist. The efficiency is high, but the cane losses are higher, and miscellaneous material (leaves and dirt) is also higher.
We harvested 27.61 tonnes of canes from 6 mu of cane lands (1ha = 15mu). 10% of this was leaves and dirt. The cane price remained unchanged of 520 yuan/mt.
What Are Your Concerns?
We’ve had one major incident so far this harvest. The newly harvested land was caught on fire by a cigarette end. A sprinkler was started to prevent the spread of the fire, otherwise the unharvested sugarcane fields would have been destroyed in the fire.
This year’s crop seems to depend entirely on irrigation, with high yields from well-watered crops and much lower yields from water-starved ones. Fertilizer is still so expensive; I wish I had used one less package.
Next Step?
After this crop, I will say goodbye to GUI 42 cane. During the harvest, it was found that compared with other varieties, Guifu 98-296 had strong drought tolerance, but because it was experimental, the planting area was not large!
The new roads will be ready soon. As the government encouraged farmers to switch from eucalyptus to sugar cane, now the eucalyptus is almost cleared from this land. And the most difficult period of the pandemic seems coming to an end.
Are the better days for sugar cane farmers coming soon?
