Rain poses threat to Oz sugar crop

Torrential rain over the past month could pose a threat to Australia's sugar crop for 2008/09, but the industry was still expecting production to increase from previous seasons, the Canegrowers group said yesterday.

"The substantial rainfall which had occurred over the past month, while generally positive, now presented a risk that lack of sun and waterlogging would take a toll," the group's chief executive officer Ian Ballantyne said in a statement.

Ballantyne said that the Australian industry was not expecting major crop losses overall, but the rain had hit many individual growers south of Cairns and around Mackay and the Burdekin, where there would be some reduction in production.

However, the rain had also replenished aquifers and secured irrigation supplies for many cane growing areas.

"The cane industry has had enough rain for now," he said.

It was too early in the growing season, which culminates in harvesting in the second half of the calendar year, to begin to put numbers on the net effect of the rain, said Canegrowers Chairman Alf Cristaudo.

However, he said that the industry was still looking for a better crop and total sugar production this year than in the past two seasons.

Cristaudo agreed with a forecast of higher Australian sugar production in 2008/09 last week by the government unit the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

In its first forecast for 2008/09, the bureau last week forecast that Australia would produce 4.97 million tons of sugar, up from 4.85 million tons the year before and from 4.72 million tons the year before that.

Australian sugar production has been hit in recent years by poor weather, low prices, unprofitability and the threat of large-scale exports from India.

Agencies

(China Daily 03/11/2008 page16)