CRIME BLOTTER: Reported offenses in the Tri-parishes
November 6, 2013Platform owner sued over ’12 blast
November 6, 2013
It’s found on every restaurant table in the United States, but few people probably give a thought about what it takes to get a tablespoon of sugar. But here in the Tri-parish area, part of the state’s sugar cane belt, one doesn’t have to search far to find someone who does.
“There’s nobody in the Sugar Cane Belt that doesn’t have a family member who is somehow involved with the sugarcane business,” said Greg Nolan, general manager at Lafourche Sugar in Thibodaux, as he stood on the front porch of the mill’s main office. “We have 140 workers just here at the mill.”
Each year, sugar cane farmers from eight parishes, including Terrebonne, Lafourche and St. Mary, bring their harvest to Lafourche Sugar for grinding, the first stage of processing for that sweet white substance found in little packets on tables across the country.
The Thibodeaux Brothers, owned by Troy, Corey and Lance Thibodeaux, and their nine harvest workers are harvesting their 1,900-acre sugar cane crop near Thibodaux, a mere five miles from Lafourche Sugar, where the sugar cane will be ground. On this particular morning, the brothers are having a tailgate meeting with Sam Irwin, American Sugar Cane League public relations director and Herman Waguespack Jr., an agronomist and agronomy staff member with the ASCL.
“It’s not going to be good this year,” Troy says as a tractor-trailer pours a load of cut cane into a waiting 18-wheeler trailer. “A local businessman, whom I won’t name, told me he’s only paying $2 more for a 25-pound bag of sugar than he was 25 years ago. Nothing is balancing out.”
Troy Thibodeaux has been in the sugar cane industry for 31 years. As a fifth-generation sugar cane farmer, Thibodeaux said increased labor, fuel, fertilizer and equipment costs and the amount of foreign sugar flooding and low market value of sugar may bring an end to a decades-long family tradition of farming.
“We have a lot of decisions to make,” he said. “I’m not going to get into debt (to keep farming sugar cane). Another two or three more years, and I may get out of this business. Costs have doubled, but sugar prices are the same. We will take a hard look at things. This is a big investment for a little return.
“They should not allow so much sugar to come in from other countries. There is nothing fair about the free trade agreement. Sugar from Mexico is flooding the market, and they have cheap labor.”
“Our daddy farmed to farm,” Corey said. “Now you have to farm to be a business man. When he farmed, the money to farm the following year was there.”
Even with high costs of farming and low market values on sugar, Troy expects to do a little better than breaking even this year, but the farmer expresses concern for those who may end the year in the red.
“We’ve got a good crop, but it’s not mature enough for a good sugar content,” he said. “You need to make a 35 to 36 ton crop to do well. People who only have a 30-ton crop are going to do badly. It’s going to snowball and affect a lot of people like equipment dealers and tire dealers.”
Still, the show must go on. There is no break in the activity as harvesters cut the cane and offload it into a waiting cart that is pulled alongside by a tractor. Once the cart is full, another tractor and cart combo quickly takes its place, and the contents of the full cart are loaded into an 18-wheeler trailer. In no time, the 18-wheeler trailer is full, and rig kicks up dust as it lumbers back toward the highway.
Back at the mill, the dust is also flying as a steady stream of 18-wheelers pull up to offload the sugar cane into a holding area. Nolan made his way through the haze to the mill’s core lab where each load of sugar cane is sampled after being weighed. Through testing, the fiber and sediment content and brix or sugar content of each load is determined. More than 600 loads of sugar cane are dropped off at the mill each day of grinding, and each load holds 25 to 30 tons for sugar cane.
“In 1937, this mill processed 60,000 tons of cane a year,” Nolan said. “Now we process 100,000 tons a week.”
From the lab, it’s on to the actual mill. What may be a maze to some is no problem for Nolan as he entered the mill near the conveyor that feeds the cane into the building. The manager makes rounds through the plant each day to make sure things are running smoothly. One broken part of the mill can halt grinding, but Lafourche Sugar is more than prepared for the worst.
“We have a duplicate of each part,” Nolan said. “We have more than $8 million in spare parts.
“The sugarcane must be processed within 24 hours of being cut. It’s perishable.”
From the holding area, sugar cane is fed into the mill, rinsed and leveled then pulverized, rolled and crushed to remove the juice. Fiber left over from this part of the process is sent to another area of the plant and will later be burned to produce power for the plant as well as the local power company.
“We use everything but the oink,” Nolan says, laughing.
The juice is then moved to large tanks for the clarification process, and mud removed from the juice is filtered out and brought back to the fields.
“During clarification, our goal is to reduce inversion,” Nolan said as he filled a beaker with juice to check the clarity. “The juice pH is 5.6, and we want to bring it up to 7.”
Next, the liquid is boiled, which crystalizes the sugar, and then spun in large centrifuges to separate the syrup or molasses from the sugar. The raw sugar is then stored in a large warehouse before being shipped off to Louisiana Sugar Refining in Gramercy.
Like the Thibodeaux’s, Nolan is also concerned about the future of the sugarcane industry.
“Sugarcane mills not doing well either,” he said. “Production costs have gone up, and payroll, health insurance and overtime have gone up, too. We need sugarcane farmers to keep farming sugarcane.”
