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Insight Focus
- It’s still very dry in Southern China.
- Cane yields could be poor as a result.
- Cane harvesting should begin in around a month.
What have you been up to?
We enjoyed a nice break during the golden week, with Po of course.
Right before the holidays, I participated a Farmer’s Harvest Pageant held by the Binyang government. This year has not been a good. But the good news is we got a subsidy of 280k yuan for purchasing agricultural machines. It’s helpful because we spent a lot of money on the irrigation this year.
What stage is your crop at?
Things were not so great when we were back to the farm. Rains are still not coming so the irrigation continues. The yields of our sugarcane could be worst in recent years. We should start cutting canes in late November but it’s up to sugar mill’s call.
The cane fields with ample irrigation (100-ish mu) grow better than the spring canes of 800 mu and could probably out-perform the ratoons of over 1000mu before new year (Jan 1st). But the good canes are not enough to cover the loss of spring canes and ratoons. The first three seasons in 2022 were so dry due to La Nina effect. We’re concerned the odds of a cold winter is increasing which is not in favour of sugarcanes. Anyway, we did everything we can and leave the rest to fate.
What have you done differently?
This year we transformed the sprinkler into large flow, which is also easy to install and disassemble, thus improving the efficiency of irrigation. We are also fixing the roads for the upcoming harvesting and delivery.
The cane variety of Gui44 that my neighbour planted looks promising. It’s 2.5 meters high and could yield 6.5 tonnes per mu (97.5mt/ha). It could yield 8 tonnes if it wasn’t damaged by pests!
