Sugar Cane Problems

[Gary A]

Since The price of sugar cane has gone up there are more sugar cane farmers than there are workers to cut it. I dread the thought of when they start to burn off the leaves. This area of Loei province will be so smoky that it will be difficult to breathe. There is a LOT more cane this year than last year and last year they had MANY illegal Burmese and Laotians working here cutting the cane. The police had no choice but to ignore all the illegal workers. The raggedy old trucks were on the roads 24 hours a day. Many with no tail lights and barely moving. They were also ignored. Since the cane must be processed fairly quickly the police were instructed to let the trucks alone. Highway 201 from Loei all the way to Chumpae will be very dangerous to drive for a couple of months.

This looks like an ideal opportunity for some enterprising people to set up small local sugar processing plants. The mechanical cane harvester strips off the leaves and leaves them as ground cover to conserve moisture for the re-growth. After crushing the cane the bagasse is normally burned to boil down the extracted juice. Most of the sugar cane from up here is being used to make ethanol so no refining is needed. Transporting the cane up to 150 kilometers HAS to be expensive. Transporting raw sugar only requires 1/8 of the trucking tonnage.

[turnpike]

This area of Loei province will be so smoky that it will be difficult to breathe.

never had much of a problem with the smoke so far, but many days ashes fall out of the sky, i can only assume it's from someone burning cane somewhere even though you can't see smoke anywhere. reminded me of when mount st. helens blew in washington state a few years back. i was living in southwern alberta (canada) at least 1100 kms. away, you'd have to dust off your vehicle some mornings.

good idea about the harvester, just wish i had some $$ to follow up on that one....