Opinions Focus
- Thailand’s cane harvest begins imminently.
- Floodwater has largely drained away.
- With this, attention is focussed on cane growth and performance.
What have you been up to?
The cane planting season is almost finished in Thailand, but some farmers are also able to plant in the pre-rainy season from March onwards.
I’m about to finish planting cane and cassava as well. For the 23/24 crop season, we will own about 750 rai of cane including 350 rai of new planted cane and 400 rai of ratoon cane. In addition, I also planted 150 rai of cassava this year.
After finish all of the planting activities, now I need to apply herbicide which is very important at this stage. Without herbicide application, weeds start to grow in the cane field while the cane is about 1 meter tall and it is difficult to manage the weeds at this point.
I’ve used a drone for herbicide application, it is very convenient and cheaper compared to the normal man labor. However, it is not very efficient as sometimes the drone flew too high or too low which could affect to the effectiveness of the herbicide.
What stage is your crop at?
Cane is now facing with White Leaf Disease which lowers the agricultural yield. It is now spreading rapidly and has become a concern to the farmers in the area. Overall, for this upcoming crushing season, I expect to achieve up 12 – 15 mt/rai for new planted cane. Unfortunately, my ratoon cane performs very poorly and I expect to achieve only 5 mt/rai on average.
The new cane that I just finished planting has germinated well given the high amount of rainfall.
What’s your biggest concern?
The floods I previously described have drained away. The main concern now is harvesting: I expects the cost of labor will be a record high this year as there’s less available labor this year.
The mills will become stricter this upcoming crushing season, as they will deduct some money from the farmers who deliver burnt cane and cane that including leaf, mud, or sand (dirty cane).
