As the sugarcane harvest season begins, sheriffs in several south Louisiana parishes are warning motorists to practice extra caution on the roads. Not only will there be an increase in machinery and cane hauling trucks on the roadway, but the forecast calls for foggy…
The Louisiana Sugarcane Industry has now completed 229 years of commercial sugar production. Considering it’s the northernmost sugarcane growing region in the world, that’s certainly something to be proud of. Growing a tropical crop in Louisiana’s temperate…
Beyond the Bayou: Advancing Plant Science in a Diverse and Changing Agricultural Region For the first time, the Plant Science Symposium affiliated with the Corteva Symposia Series is being held at Louisiana State University and supported by Corteva Agriscience. About…
Chad Hanks can sum up this sugarcane growing season rather succinctly. “Unprecedented,” Hanks said as he stood in a sugarcane field in Lafayette Parish. The field Hanks was in had cane that was barely 3 feet tall when it should have been 7 to 9 feet tall. Conditions…
By now most Louisiana farmers know that the United States Department of Labor (DOL) has implemented a change in the way that wages are set for the H-2A guest worker program. It means an unprecedented wage increase for certain groups of guest workers. In some sectors…
Over the past ten years, sugarcane acreage has rapidly expanded, especially in Vermillion Parish in the western cane belt and Pointe Coupee, Avoyelles and Rapides in the north. Pointe Coupee now has more than 70,000 acres in production, when just ten years ago parish…
Jackie Theriot, a St. Martin Parish native, is one of three agricultural leaders to be inducted into the Louisiana Agriculture Hall of Distinction. The induction will take place at the L’Auberge Hotel in Baton Rouge March 2. Theriot, born in Catahoula and the son of a…
Colin Campo of the Daily Comet interviewed two sugarcane farmers from the Lafourche-Terrebonne parish area to compare the 2021 crop ravaged by Hurricane Ida and what the 2022 looks like. Here’s the beginning of his report. Sugar-cane farmers in Terrebonne and…
The 2022-23 Louisiana sugarcane harvest is in full swing now and most everyone in the industry is feeling optimistic for a good harvest. Sugarcane acreage increased again this year. In 2021, 469,000 acres were harvested but this season about 475,000 acres are expected…