Insight Focus
- More cane will be planted in my area for the next crop season due to high prices.
- Preparing area for cane plantation in mid-October for crop 24/25.
- Cane turns yellow and cassava roots become rotten due to flooding in September.
Cz: What Have You Been Up To This Farming Season?
Khun Chairat: Crop 2024/2025 I believed Thailand will plant more cane compared to cassava, even for myself. The first reason is that cane price is very high and encouraging, around 1,300-1,400 THB/mt. Secondly, shortage of quality seeds of cassava, it is infected by CMD and spreading from province to province and its price now is low, at around 2-3 THB/kg.
Now, I’m preparing the land like tillage, getting ready for planting cane for the next 2024/2025 crop. Besides that, am not doing anything much because I have already done herbicide and fertilizer application.
It’s currently the rainy season, what we do is watch them grow, and monitor with care in case there is any disease spreading around the area or another issue that could have happened.
Cz: What Harvest Stage Is Your Crop At?
KC: “Last month I didn’t have problems with the size or rotting in roots, and that there is a CMD disease in the nearby area. However, this time I got it. There was continuous rain over my area since the first week of September until now, flooding rice fields and low area. Quite interesting that from January to August there was 700mm of rainfall, but September alone is already 400mm rainfall in my province.”
KC: “We had to get rid of cassava roots because it will be rotten from too much rain. The size is still small and starch is not high, contaminated with sand and mud, the cassava yard couldn’t give a good price due to low quality. Some even rotten because I couldn’t dig them out on time, so I lost some of the quality roots to the flood. On the other hand, cane is growing green and healthy but due to an absence rain in Q1 and Q2 the height isn’t very tall yet. Last year it was around 3 meters tall, but this year at the same age it is at 2.5 meters tall only. Some leaves turn yellow due to flooding but next month when the rain stops it will eventually recover.”
Cz: What’s Your Biggest Concern?
KC: “The thing I am concerned about is El Nino, whether it will get worse or not next year because I will plant more cane due to high price. Also, concern on the cane policy, since the new government had been formed, they are now busy working on many new policies and cane is one of them. It is still unclear on what condition or criteria it will take. If farmers deliver burnt cane, will they get fined, or what kind of punishment they must face? Still unclear and too early to say.”
