Plans through December

My agenda for the remainder of the Month of December is as follows:

Dec 6 - 12 (Sun - Sat): Making sugarcane crosses at Canal Point, FL (see last year's blog this time of year).

Dec 12 - 16 (Sat - Wed): Spending time with Lori & James, who are coming into town. We're excited.

Dec 17 - 19 (Thu - Sat): Whirlwind trip to our future home site in Tracy City, TN, meeting with Grant Miller, and other people we will be contracting work out to.

Dec 22 - 28 (Tue - Mon): Judy and I will be spending Christmas with Julie, Matt, and three granddaughters, Allison, Lauren, and Megan, the youngest of whom I will be introducing myself to for the very first time.

On another note: I am updating the book, "Tew Heritage," which is a history of Wm. Thos. Tew and his wife, Clara, and their descendants. I had conversations with descendants of each of his seven children last night, and was amazed at the level of interest there is in me pursuing this project. It will probably take several months to complete. When completed, it may very well go on line, so I may be looking for some "family" expertise.

Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année!

Merry Christmas to all from Cajun Country. The above picture was taken by myself in the small town of Canal Point, Florida at a food stand. It was close enough to Christmas, and the sugarcane stalks were close enough to the Christmas colors of green and red I felt compelled to stop and take the shot and save it for Christmas Day. It is also intended to suggest abundance and prosperity from Mother Earth, as we all look forward to a new year. May you all have a happy and prosperous new year!

Making sugarcane crosses for Louisiana at Canal Point, Florida

Every year, in early December sugarcane breeders in Louisiana go to Florida to make genetic crosses. The seed will mature in Florida and be returned to Louisiana to begin a 12-year selection process that ultimately culminates in the development of new, higher yielding, disease and insect resistant varieties. The breeding activity occurs at the USDA Sugarcane Field Station at Canal Point, Florida, on the southeast corner of Lake Okeechobee. Temperatures are moderated by this large lake, so this is a good location to have a sugarcane breeding facility within the continental U.S., where sugarcane naturally flowers outdoors. A blowup of the above picture captured from from Google Earth shows the very large and narrow crossing house where the crosses are made. Parents designated to be used as females are maintained outdoors; night temperatures below 60 F will kill the pollen they produce, and thus cause the outdoor plants to be largely male sterile. Parents designated to be used as males are maintained on a very long rail cart, which gets rolled out of the crossing house every morning (so we have room to make crosses indoors inside cubicles on both sides of the building), then rolled inside the crossing house every evening so that they are kept warm at night. The crossing activity in Florida is aimed at making commercial crosses for both the Florida and Louisiana sugarcane industries. Our people have been in Florida over the past two weeks; I will be going down this week. We do make crosses at Houma, Louisiana on a smaller scale, but most of the locally made crosses are designed to introgress highly desirable traits from wild canes into a commercial background. Examples of desirable traits from the wild canes include improved vigor, cold tolerance, stalk population, and stubbling ability.

Genetic Improvement of Bioenergy Crops

Dr. Wilfred Vermerris, Associate Professor at the Genetics Institute and Agronomy department at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL, edited a book entitled, "Genetic Improvement of Bioenergy Crops," that was published by Springer. Dr. Vermerris invited me to write the chapter on energy cane, which I agreed to do. I entitled the chapter, "Genetic Improvement of Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) as an Energy Crop." Robert Cobill, formerly on the staff of the USDA Sugarcane Research Laboratory in Houma, LA, is co-author. The book is out now, and available through Amazon. Dr. Vermerris will be using this as his textbook when he teaches a course on the same subject.

U. S. Sugar Corp going out of business

Shocking news, U.S. Sugar Corp, the nation's largest producer of cane sugar, will go out of business in a $1.75 billion deal to sell its nearly 300 square miles of land to Florida for Everglades restoration. Once the deal is in place, U.S. Sugar would be allowed to farm the 187,000 acres of land for six more years before closing its doors. This area represents nearly half of the 400,000+ acres that sugarcane is grown on in Florida, the state that produces the largest amount of sugar from sugarcane. U.S. Sugar Corp employs about 1,700 people. Florida's Governor, Charlie Crist, said the deal is “as monumental as the creation of our nation's first national park, Yellowstone.” Perhaps that's a stretch, but those who have been fighting against sugar interests in an effort to protect the Everglades are surely celebrating this announcement, as part of the deal is to return the land as closely as possible to its pre-agricultural condition. Unless there are plans to grow sugarcane elsewhere in Florida, which I very much doubt, Louisiana will likely surpass Florida as the leading sugar producing state (from sugarcane) in the USA, that is, unless Louisana farmers start phasing out of sugar as well. Other crops that may not grow as well as sugarcane in Louisiana’s cane belt are starting to look increasingly lucrative at this juncture, so anything could happen between now and six years from now.

Clewiston, Florida (where U.S. Sugar Corp is headquartered) may have to re-think its title, “America's Sweetest Town."