Sugarcane crops on the rise in south county
A growing number of contract farmers are growing sugarcane for U.S. Sugar in south Highlands County, agriculture analysts said.
“No doubt, an ever-increasing amount of sugarcane is being grown in Highlands County and I perceive they’re adding additional acreage every year,” said Ray Royce, executive director of the Heartland Agricultural Association.
The contract growers in south Highlands County lease land from ag giant Lykes Bros. Inc. to grow sugarcane for U.S. Sugar, which then processes the harvest into raw sugar.
Lykes, which has one of Florida’s largest contiguous private ranches at 339,000 acres, leases about 6,400 acres east of Lake Placid and other parts of southern Highlands County to independent growers, who then plant, manage, and harvest the sugarcane, Lykes spokesman Cari Roth said.
Some 73,000 acres of the Lykes Bros. ranch are in Highlands County; the family-run company also leases land for citrus, cattle, vegetables, and other operations.
To accommodate the larger harvest, U.S. Sugar in 2016 overhauled a siding once owned by South Central Florida Express on Old State Road.
“We extended the siding and added a sugarcane loading station,” U.S. Sugar spokesman Ryan Duffy said.
When the time comes, farmers will use the U.S. Sugar siding to load their sugarcane onto rail cars for the trip to Clewiston for processing.
“They are not harvesting right now, but when they do, you’ll see a lot of trucks there waiting to unload,” he said.
A busload of Leadership Highlands participants made the sugarcane loading facility one of its stops during a day-long agribusiness tour of the county in January, Royce said.
Highlands County growers are adding tons of the sweet grass to U.S. Sugar’s large operation. The private company farms more than 230,000 acres of land in Hendry, Glades, Martin, and Palm Beach counties.
Duffy said each railcar of sugarcane contains approximately 40 tons of sugarcane. Last year, U.S. Sugar processed 7.85 million tons of sugarcane at its Clewiston mill.
Mike Milicevic grows sugarcane for U.S. Sugar on County Road 621 near Lake Placid. He began planting higher-content sugarcane for U.S. Sugar on a 5,400 acre farm east of Lake Istokpoga in 2018, he said.
Milicevic was U.S. Feed Stocks Operations manager of BP Biofuels from June 2011 until September 2016.
“We once grew cane for British Petroleum,” he said. “We called it ‘energy cane’ in the biofuels days. The U.S. Sugar cane is much higher in sugar content.”
Milicevic, who has been a farmer for at least 30 years, said he usually plants the sugarcane in November and December, depending on the weather. The sugarcane processing mill in Clewiston starts up around October.
“It’s a one-year crop, but we can harvest it at least three times,” he said. “After that the plant starts to weaken.”
Industry statistics put the average yield per acre between 44.5 and 100 tons in Florida. Yield depends on soil, variety, and the age of the sugarcane, Milicevic said.
Though his operation is heavily dependent on mechanization, he can’t do the job without human hands.
“Sugarcane means jobs,” said Milicevic, past president of the Florida Ag Council. “We have five full-time employees but when we start planting or harvesting we have 80 to 100 people out here.”
Jobs in sugarcane production include farming, transporting, milling, processing and refining. The industry is responsible for 19,201 jobs in Florida and adds $4.7 billion annually to the state’s economy, Duffy said.
Like other south county farmers, Milicevic once grew sugarcane for British Petroleum’s biofuels program, but the company pulled out after the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in 2010, Royce said.
“Lykes was leasing a whole bunch of property to BP and BP was going to build an ethanol plant off State Road 70,” Royce said. “BP was going to lease 20,000 acres to grow sorghum for ethanol. Then BP had their problem in the Gulf of Mexico and faced legal action from the state.”
Sugarcane has become a part of life for Highlands County growers like Mike Milicevic.
“I’ve been in agriculture my whole life, between cattle, crops, and sugarcane,” he said. “I enjoy doing it.”
Source Link: https://www.midfloridanewspapers.com/highlands_news-sun/sugarcane-crops-on-the-rise-in-south-county/article_759d2314-c07d-11ee-b695-534fdff5cc92.html
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