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Started By
Message
re: Has the sugar industry become exploitative in south Louisiana?
Posted on 12/27/25 at 2:23 pm to Riverside
Posted on 12/27/25 at 2:23 pm to Riverside
quote:
They aren’t illegals. Migrant farm workers are perfectly legal.
And again, sugarcane is a historically important crop to Louisiana that is worth protecting from foreign imports
Read this post from the perspective of someone who is not directly or indirectly employed by the sugar industry.
It has elements that reminds me of the bitter, angry people on TikTok that were furious that their EBT cards weren't reloaded immediately during the government shutdown.
Just because we've propped up something in the past doesn't mean we should do it in the future.
1
Posted on 12/27/25 at 2:26 pm to Riverside
quote:
Louisiana farmers cannot fairly compete with foreign grown sugar. I have no issue with protecting a historically important domestic industry in Louisiana.
That's the problem. At some point buggy whips and kerosene were "historically important" to some communities.
If we weren't protecting giant sugar producers.....we might actually be able to develop an agricultural base that is important to our future.
Posted on 12/27/25 at 2:34 pm to frequent flyer
It was exploitive in 1964 in Hahnville. Weekends my high school brother and I were working picking up scrap sugar cane and throwing it on the next row for pick up. Week end job that did not interfere with high school. How did I know it was exploitive? Owner with held social security from my 90 cent per hour paycheck. I did not get a social security number till 2 years later
Posted on 12/27/25 at 2:35 pm to Zach
quote:
readily admitted that if protectism against imports were eliminated they would simply shift to other crops, saying: 'The soil here is very fertile and will grow almost anything.'
This is what grinds my gears about sugar cane. You can grow sugar cane in a gravel pit and we grow it in some of the best soil in the country.
Not like we have a food problem anyway. Food / Farming is a tough subject to deal with. If you allow full blow free market competition, we'll lose all family farms of anything within a couple years and become dependent on foreign farms - worst position possible from a security standpoint. Barrier to entry is impossibly high and once you convert farmland to anything else the barrier gets exponentially higher.
On the other hand, we grow so much shite that instead of eating it we burn it for fuel. The whole local family farm businesss model is noble but in reality doesn't work. We're so prosperous that the collective has no interest in actually living that business and community model.
So, sometimes we pay farmers to NOT grow stuff. Wild times we live in.
Posted on 12/27/25 at 2:56 pm to DownshiftAndFloorIt
quote:
You can grow sugar cane in a gravel pit and we grow it in some of the best soil in the country.
When you start farming in that gravel pit, pls. let me be the first to know what your CRS is.
Yeah, Pointe Coupee and Avoyelles farmers are using some of the best land in the country to grow cane right now. Key word- right now. They would gladly go back to corn or beans if they could make money doing it. But you can’t so cane acreage has increased and it’s driven the price down the further it’s grown north.
Have you seen what Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa. Illinois- all the flyover states look like right now? Farmers with all those cash subsidies are going bankrupt.
I wish any of y’all bashing cane could see what a country looks like that can’t feed itself.
No system is perfect, and ours is far from it. But we have a tremendous amount of food security here and that is priceless.
Posted on 12/27/25 at 3:10 pm to frequent flyer
quote:
Cane in particular offers low job density per acre, and much the labor it does bring on tends to rely heavily on migrant visas during harvesting season, bypassing a lot of the local labor pool and concentrating the earnings on the corporations and families that own the operations.
Is this really any different than all forms of farming these days? Rowcrops, sugar, produce, tree groves, poultry, cattle, dairy, aquaculture. All of it is mechanized and only offeres a few good jobs to management and some low wage seasonal jobs made up largely of H2A labor
Posted on 12/27/25 at 3:46 pm to dewster
quote:
But we can burn entire sugar cane fields without any concern over the environmental impact?
Wow you dumb asses make me think our lawmakers aren’t so bad.
At least they have enough sense to not destroy a 4 billion dollar industry because pussys like you whine about some ashes and a little smoke for 1 month a year.
Fire and smoke existed long before man and will be around long after we gone.
Posted on 12/27/25 at 3:50 pm to Guntoter1
It’s like they don’t know that foresters control burn millions of acres a year to better manage woodlands.
Posted on 12/27/25 at 4:04 pm to frequent flyer
Do you want foresters and timberland owners to stop prescribed burns?
Don't they burn it after the harvest? I think they do.
This is interesting.
LINK
quote:
Farmers burn sugarcane fields before harvest to clear away dry leaves and tops, making it easier and cheaper to harvest the sugar-rich stalks.
Don't they burn it after the harvest? I think they do.
This is interesting.
LINK
quote:
Louisiana’s Top 10 Commodities in 2023
Commodity Total Value
Forestry $3.51 billion
Sugarcane $1.58 billion
Poultry $1.56 billion
Feed grain crops $881.46 million
Rice $769.91 million
Aquaculture $704.51 million
Marine fisheries $643.26 million
Soybeans $642.56 million
Cattle and calves $640.07 million
Horses $513.66 million
This post was edited on 12/27/25 at 4:26 pm
Posted on 12/27/25 at 4:10 pm to frequent flyer
Delete
This post was edited on 12/27/25 at 4:11 pm
Posted on 12/27/25 at 5:00 pm to member12
quote:
Yep. The land would relatively quickly be repurposed for production that doesn't require so much protection and government intervention to support.
Such as?
Posted on 12/27/25 at 5:02 pm to dewster
quote:
their EBT cards weren't reloaded immediately during the government shutdown. Just because we've propped up something in the past doesn't mean we should do it in the future.
The people getting the ebt cards used to be the person working in the sugar industry but now it’s too easy to stay home so they have to import labor and it’s not cheap labor either
Posted on 12/27/25 at 5:06 pm to DownshiftAndFloorIt
quote:
best soil in the country.
The soil is great, the climate is not
Again what are these other non subsidized, high value crops that provide a bunch of Americans high paying jobs would you like to see grown?
Also the sugar policy cost the American taxpayer the least out of all row crops
Posted on 12/27/25 at 5:34 pm to frequent flyer
Sugar has benefitted a select few and made places poor wherever it's gone – the Caribbean, that one part of south Florida where all the NFL football players are from, etc.
This post was edited on 12/27/25 at 5:35 pm
Posted on 12/27/25 at 6:37 pm to Violent Hip Swivel
Since you want to make this a global thing….you’ve obviously never seen the publically traded sugar mills of Brazil.
Posted on 12/27/25 at 6:43 pm to dewster
quote:
It would be a lot easier to look the other way if the migrant labor wasn't 90+% of their workforce
I have a cousin who farms several thousand acres of row crops. He doesn't use migrant labor but struggles to find local labor willing to work the long hours that farming requires.
Posted on 12/27/25 at 7:01 pm to samson73103
Needs to pump his acreage up 3-5 times and import some real afrikaners.
Cane ground is stiff, rice or poverty peas is all you’re going to grow and it will need to be leveled. Pretty good possibility you’re going to run out of water in drought years.
Cane ground is stiff, rice or poverty peas is all you’re going to grow and it will need to be leveled. Pretty good possibility you’re going to run out of water in drought years.
Posted on 12/27/25 at 7:04 pm to Midtiger farm
quote:
Again what are these other non subsidized, high value crops that provide a bunch of Americans high paying jobs would you like to see grown?
I think I summarized my thoughts well. I dont think anything needs to be done. We have so much grain food that we burn it and pay dump trucks of money to not plant it sometimes.
Posted on 12/27/25 at 7:14 pm to DownshiftAndFloorIt
quote:
money to not plant it sometimes
Please point me to any usda program that does this in the last 30 years
We grow too much corn and soybeans
Some of that should go back to cattle and some to small grains or crops like edible beans
Posted on 12/27/25 at 7:19 pm to frequent flyer
Cane trash is burned AFTER harvest and it’s done for agronomic reasons. The root system will rot over winter under a trash layer. This problem is unique to Louisiana because of our climate, elevation, and rainfall.
You don’t know enough about the subject to have this conversation
You don’t know enough about the subject to have this conversation
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