By Hannah O. Brown, Becca Burton & Anna Hamilton
Published March 26, 2019
Florida’s long and complicated sugar story is at a crossroads. As pressure to change the industry mounts, some Glades area residents have questioned the safety of using pre-harvest burns as a standard in cane farming. At the same time, some sugar farmers argue that Florida’s tropical conditions make cane burning an absolute necessity.
Sugarcane communities aren’t the only ones looking for industry innovations. Both scientists and businesses are thinking about sugarcane in new ways, considering what techniques can be amended or fine-tuned, and what materials can be repurposed and capitalized. But to what extent will the sugarcane industry adapt?
This is Part Three of A Sugarcane Boiling Point, a three-part series about Florida’s sugarcane industry, harvesting practices and the rich heritage at stake.
Challenges to a Green Industry
The main purpose of the pre-harvest burn is to remove “the leafy residue before they harvest it to improve harvest efficiency, milling efficiency and also to finish the harvesting and milling process on time,” said Hardev Sandhu, an assistant professor of agronomy located at the UF/IFAS Everglades Research and Education Center.
Florida’s ground is wet, and weeds thrive. Florida soils hold moisture for a long time. There are few hills to carry away excess water. Some scientists, as well as sugar industry representatives, say the green harvesting techniques, such as using mechanical harvesters, wouldn’t suffice with Florida’s nature creeping up.
Sandhu conducted a year-long study to compare green harvest to burned cane harvest techniques. He wanted to know how each one affected plant growth, final yield and soil temperature.
Sandhu found that with green harvesting, residue remains on the soil surface that limits sunlight, reduces the soil temperature and slows initial plant growth. Green harvesting techniques also make crops more vulnerable to Florida’s seasonal freezes, Sandhu said.
But, at the end of the study, he was unable to find any significant differences in the annual yield of both groups.
Though the sugar industry says profits would decrease with green harvesting techniques, proponents say there are other ways to recoup the lost dollars. They point out that bagasse, the spent stalk from sugar extraction, is an untapped Florida resource in a market rife with opportunity. “Sustainability” has become a consumer buzzword, prompting a surge in eco-friendly goods and services.
It’s a focus Emerald Brand, a disposables manufacturing company, has embraced.
Ralph Bianculli, Jr., managing director of Emerald Brand, said his father’s journey to create a plastic and tree-free disposables manufacturing company that competes with traditional brands was a long one.
“We compete at the same or better price,” Bianculli, Jr. said.
Bianculli Jr.’s brother developed a permanent disability which Ralph Bianculli, Sr. attributes to high levels of mercury. As the elder Bianculli began looking into how our environment affects public health, he realized that the paper and plastics industry was partly to blame.
In the mid-90s, he sold his traditional manufacturing company, and by 1997 started fresh with a select amount of recycled products. By 2007 he introduced a line of plastic and tree-free products made out of fiber from sugarcane, wheat and corn starch.
As consumer awareness builds about the impacts of single-use plastics on the environment, more and more businesses are looking in the same direction as Bianculli.
A 2015 Nielsen survey found that a company’s commitment to sustainability can influence product purchases for 45 percent of consumers.
Bianculli said Emerald Brand only sources fiber that is grown as a byproduct of the main crop, not solely for disposables. For sugarcane, he said he tries to source from locations that use green harvesting techniques, though he said it’s too hard to guarantee that right now.
“We find it hard to sit in a position to say we will absolutely not do business with you if you burn this,” he said. “Our goal is to build up enough capacity where we can do that and we can say that.”
Currently, Emerald Brand is not working with any partners in Florida.
Last year, the state of Florida welcomed Tellus, a company co-owned by Florida Crystals Corporation and the Sugarcane Growers Cooperative of Florida. Tellus manufactures disposable plates, bowls and takeout containers out of bagasse. Tellus CEO Matt Hoffman told a crowd of 300 at a ribbon-cutting ceremony that 35,000 biodegradable plates can be produced from one ton of bagasse.
Their arrival came with an $850,000 property tax exemption with the promise that the company would provide 71 new jobs with a starting wage of $15.84 an hour by 2022. This would make a big difference to the Glades region, which has an unemployment rate that is quadruple the national average.
There are currently no job openings on the Tellus website, and the company declined an interview request from The Marjorie. Tellus sources its bagasse from sugar farms in the Everglades Agricultural Area, which has “among the most fertile and productive farmland in America,” according to the Tellus website.
A Future for Florida Sugarcane
For South Bay resident Kina Phillips, the benefits of transitioning to green harvesting are as clear as day, especially after seeing the health impacts to members of her community.
“Common sense would let you know that you got crop dusters that are spraying pesticide with this poison onto our food, and you put fire onto the poison,” she said. “Who is breathing it up? Who’s breathing it if it’s right behind your house? If it’s right behind your school? Who’s breathing it? We are breathing it.”
"If I don’t fight, I leave this battle to my kids. You know, the less I fight, the more they gonna have to fight."
Phillips is aware of the potential problems of speaking out about the burns in a community that relies on the sugar industry in so many ways, but she feels called to take up the banner for her children’s future.
“It's sad,” she said. “It's very, very sad, and if I don’t fight, I leave this battle to my kids. You know the less I fight, the more they gonna have to fight. So I have to fight hard before I leave here.”
For sugarcane farmer Amy Perry, a future without cane farming is one she fears for her children.
“I just want to see the future for myself to be able to continue farming, and I want to be able to have my kids and grandkids be able to farm on the same land that my family, generations before me, have,” she said.
While Perry Farms has not tried green harvesting, they have seen other farms experiment with it and have been left dissatisfied by the results.
Perry also feels the restrictions that are already placed on cane burns are sufficient. Pre-harvest burns are regulated by the Florida Forest Service. Farmers must undergo training to conduct acreage burns, and they are required to apply for permits the day of a burn.
“The biggest thing I want people to understand is we are not corporate farmers."
“[The Florida Forest Service] does put restrictions on things that they can change day-to-day,” she said. “They check out the weather conditions right before you burn it. So you have to draw up a whole plan of how you're going to burn, where you're going to burn, the wind direction.”
Florida Forest Service then approves or denies the burn, and they sometimes come to the burn site to make sure the plan was adhered to, Perry said.
“It's very regulated, and they have denied burns due to wind direction, if it's blowing near a city or something like that,” she said.
Though Perry has grown used to pressures against sugar farmers like herself, her family still receives a lot of support from community members and other farmers. She sees Perry Farms as a local business and her employees are part of her family.
“The biggest thing I want people to understand is we are not corporate farmers,” she said. “We are a bunch of small family farms who grow sugarcane and sell it to U.S. Sugar, who is also like our family."
Credits:
Photos from Amy Perry, Patrick Ferguson and the State Archives of Florida.