how is your sugar cane looking?

[thoongfoned]

wife has a "free" third year crop that looks good on a small plot by the pig farm. been flooding it from the water from the pigs,4- 5 meters plus and nice and thick, its had tens of thousands of extra liters run through it this season.

other plots that are within a stones throw of us are been ploughed under, not even a meter tall ect. the best of what I can see is around 2-3 ish meters and looking ok, been weeded and had fertilizer applied twice as far as I have seen.

the tractors are out preparing new land now for planting, the wife has got 40 plus rai rented out to a local family that farm cane on a large scale, even their cane looks substandard to me. 1000 baht a rai up front money the wife is earning.....from land that does not need clearing ie tree stumps ect.. we have 20 plus rai of burnt down 11 year old rubber trees to be cleared...

brother inlaw farms a bit of cane, no more then 30 rai this year - all small plots, he seems happy with 7-9tons a rai...... he cut and hauls all his own, sell locally.

[farmerjo]

Around here,north-east of Chumphae its all looking in the 12-15 ton range,most of the farmers are cutting back to 3-4 cycles before replanting.

No idea of this years price.?

[kickstart]

Here in Lopburi the local joke is ,will the mill open this year ,not a lot of cain around , for the mill to process, the best, a crop near me should yield well ,it need to ,watered ,from a borehole for 8 weeks most days, using a tractor to pump the water ,same with a lot of other farms .,on light land ,most will struggle to make any money .

I would say a lot farmers have spent a lot of the money from this year's crop ,drilling bore holes ,and buying pumps pipes etc. ,for watering next year ,as FJ said a lot of crops are in their 4th year ,they should come out this year ,but a lot of the smaller growers ,who use the bigger growers to do all the work ,are they going to have the capital ,or is BAAC, to replant .

Last year it was 380 Bart/ton ,to cut and haul a ton of cane ,using a machine to cut ,this year it will be about 450 Bart/ton ,a lot of growers will be using cutters to cut the cane,but will they be the cutters this year .

A lot of cain got ploughed out last year ,and put in with cassava, this year even more land will be going for cassava .

As for price ,no one knows when the mill is going to open ,let alone what the price is ,our local mill ,must be 5 years ago, put in a plant to produce they own alcohol ,not having to send the molasses down bkk for processing now , they are going to have to pay a fairly good price just to keep the plant running ,with gasohol prices low ,I would have thought the alcohol price would be low too.