Florida Firms Burn Sugar Cane As Residents Protest

This year, reporters at The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica investigated the impact of sugar cane leaves burning in Florida.

Photo Insert: Burning sugar cane

The harvesting practice helps produce more than half of America’s cane sugar, but it sends smoke and ash into largely low-income communities of color in the state’s heartland, Nadia Sussman reported.

Other countries have found ways to harvest their crops without those burns, ProPublica said, and the reporters traveled to Brazil, the world’s largest producer of sugar cane, to learn how and why they switched to another method. Brazil has a massive sugar cane industry that produces raw sugar, ethanol, and electricity.

The country farms more than 20 million acres, compared to less than 1 million in the US. Beginning in the 1990s, residents of São Paulo, the nation’s largest sugar-cane-producing state, voiced concerns similar to those of Glades residents today: They complained of ash and soot blanketing their homes, and of respiratory problems.

In response to public pressure, officials in São Paulo passed a law in 2002 mandating the gradual elimination of pre-harvest burns over the next three decades. Producers invested in harvesting equipment that allowed them to cut the cane without burning. In the following years, the sugar cane industry worked with the state government to eliminate nearly all burns by 2017 and enact other environmental-protection measures.

The results have been dramatic. The dry sugar cane leaves that once went up in smoke now form a protective blanket on the fields, enriching the soil. Some of these leaves, commonly called straw in Brazil, are also collected to generate renewable energy.

Excess electricity from the mills is sold to the grid, often at a significant profit. “I have no doubts that today, no one wants to return to the past and no one wants to burn [sugar cane],” said Antonio de Padua Rodrigues, the technical director of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association.

An advocacy group with ties to the industry argues that the straw left over from harvesting raw, unburnt cane would promote rot in Florida’s nutrient-rich soil and attract pests. Top Brazilian agronomists and industry leaders acknowledged that Florida’s soil differs from theirs in some key ways but told us that the challenges created by leftover straw can be effectively managed.

“If the problem’s the straw, you pick it up and generate energy, and that way you win twice over,” said Arnaldo Bortoletto, president of the Cooperative of Sugarcane Planters of the State of São Paulo.

In fact, some cane in Florida is already harvested without burning when it grows in “smoke-sensitive” buffer areas close to schools, hospitals, highways, and assisted living facilities.

Neither US Sugar nor Florida Crystals responded to questions about why burn-free harvesting could not be expanded. Judy Sanchez, a US Sugar vice president, previously told The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica that any changes to harvesting practices in Florida would have a “significant economic impact.” When asked for specifics, though, the company did not respond.

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