Sugarcane harvesting around the corner in Louisiana

In about one week from now, southern Louisiana goes through a transformation. The roads become filled with trucks loaded with cane headed to one of the twelve or so sugarcane mills remaining in Louisiana. The mills take on the look of beehives with all the trucks arriving to drop their loads of cane. Clouds of steam are churning out of smoke stacks at each of the factories from the sugarcane bagasse being burned to power the processing of cane in order to extract the sugar from the crop.


Today, a few USDA scientists from our location, including myself, had the opportunity to go to the John Deere factory in Thibodaux. This factory manufactures cane harvesters that are sent in sugarcane-growing areas all over the world. We were looking at some of their newest, most advanced harvesters, and even got to see a very interesting-looking prototype harvester that was designed to harvest a wide range of large tropical grasses over variable row conformations. It was a fun experience. I took a couple of shots of their latest "green machines," used for harvesting sugarcane. Of course, the prototype machine is still under wraps, so I wasn't allowed to take any shots of it. John Deere bought out Cameco a few years back, but kept the Cameco yellow color for a while. Now all of their cane harvesters are John Deere green, so it is easy to tell the farmers that have newer machines from the farmers that are still relying on the older Cameco-colored machines.

The machines are designed to cut the cane, chop the stalks into short sections less than a foot long, elevate the stalks from the harvester into a wagon, and leave all of the leafy trash in the field so that the mill only has to deal with the cleaned stalk sections. Here are two videos, one showing the harvest operation, the other giving you a sense of what you would experience being in the cab while the cane was being harvested.

Judge has ruled against genetically modified sugar beets

I learned at work that Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, has ruled against GM sugar beets. His decision was based on his opinion that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on future planting of the GM beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers. How widely? Over 95% of the U.S. sugar beet acreage is planted to Roundup Ready beets this year (2009). Worse than that, there is no non-RR seed available. It could take up to two years for the sugar beet industry to be in a position to completely switch back to non-RR beets. This could cripple the beet industry - an industry with a lot of powerful senators. Which states grow the most beets? Minnesota and Idaho are at the top of the list. I'm sure there will be a lot more to this story. In the mean time, rest assured that the cane sugar industry is not similarly impacted. The above picture was taken in Rupert, Idaho by Chad Chase for The New York Times, which reported the story on September 22.

I don't know where you come down on the GM issue, but here is a provocative video that ties my last two posts together, done by Penn and Teller. It's about 10 minutes long, if you have the time.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug dies

While Patrick Swayze's death got far more press, my attention was directed at the passing of a giant of a man, Norman Borlaug, one of the most influentual plant breeders who ever lived. Borlaug was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his role in helping to feed a hungry world through the development of short-stature wheat (Mexico) and rice (India) varieties, that had resulted in a dramatic yield in these two crops. He is widely regarded as the father of the Green Revolution. His contributions, and the recognition he got for his work, had more to do with my decision to pursue a career in plant breeding than any other single consideration. Borlaug is credited with saving the lives of hundreds of millions of people. He worked tirelessly up to his death at age 95, promoting the causes he believed strongly in. One of the statements attributed to Borlaug that left an indelible impression on me during graduate school at the University of Minnesota (coincidentally the same school Borlaug graduated from), was when he was asked what made such a successful plant breeder, he retorted, "I let the plants talk to me." He later explained that what he meant by this was that, as a breeder, he didn't sit behind a desk, or let subordinates do the "dirty work" involved in doing selection...he was out there doing the work himself, which allowed him to develop impressions of what plant characteristics were important in improving yield. This message was especially in parts of the developing world where if you had an advanced degree, that was supposed to mean that you never had to get your hands dirty again.