Frequent rain slows sugar cane planting; farmers hopeful for good harvest

St. Mary sugar cane farmers hope the region sees a pattern of dry weather soon so they can finish planting next year’s crop and start harvesting the 2016 crop.
Despite the frequent rain, industry leaders are optimistic the harvest may still be slightly better than 2015’s crop.
Local sugar cane farmer Mike Accardo of Patterson said the harvest season is supposed to begin in early October. But he still has 550 acres left to plant for next year’s crop due to delays caused by frequent rain.
He farms 3,000 acres from Calumet to Berwick with his cousin Mike Cremaldi. Accardo normally starts planting sugar cane the first week of August.
How the harvest goes “all hinges on the weather,” Accardo said.
Lots of rain in 2015 damaged Accardo’s fields so badly that the effects are still lingering, he said.
Accardo planned to resume planting today, if the fields were dry enough.
Dry weather the area has had so far this week “is important to us, and it’s coming at just the right time,” said Jim Simon, general manager of the American Sugar Cane League in Thibodaux. The league is a nonprofit organization that supports Louisiana’s sugar cane industry, according to its website.
“In all of these weather events, more so than exactly what happens with the event, (the most important thing) is what happens after the event that can have lasting effects,” Simon said.
The National Weather Service forecast for the Patterson area shows only a slight chance of rain over the next few days.
Cane farmers hope the 2016 harvest will be a little better than last year’s crop, which was average, Simon said. Prices for sugar cane should be about average and roughly the same as 2015, he said.
This year, there are a few more acres being used for sugar cane production in Louisiana, and the mild winter should help sugar cane production, too, Simon said.
“If we can have things dry up on us, then we should have a pretty good harvest season,” Simon said.
St. Mary Parish is in the top five of the 23 to 24 sugar-producing parishes in Louisiana, Simon said. Iberia Parish is the state’s leading sugar cane producer.
With harvesting set to begin soon, it’s difficult for farmers to try to do a good job planting and harvesting simultaneously. Delays in planting have also increased production costs, Simon said.
The first sugar cane mills along the eastern portion of the state’s “sugar cane belt” were scheduled to start processing cane Wednesday or today.
Most mills along Bayou Teche won’t begin processing until late next week, Simon said. Some mills will likely process sugar cane into January 2017.
“You just never know how things are going to shape out until you really get into January, or at least November, December, and have an idea of what the harvest is looking like,” Simon said.