Sugar Cane Processing Plant Drive By

[Mooseherder]

In Belle Glade Fl. the fields around this Plant are Sugar Cane.  The pile of processed pulp is unreal.  There are a hundred or so trailers of Cane at the end waiting to get processed.

Sugar Processing Plant - YouTube

[thecfarm]

That's a big place.

[Corley5]

Is sugarcane continuously cropped? 

[Mooseherder]

Yes it's grown year round.  They rotate with other crops and grow sod also out here.    There's a big annual Sugarland auction here in a couple of weeks.

[sawguy21]

How do they dispose of the processed pulp and avoid spontaneous combustion? That is a real problem at our lumber mills.

[Mooseherder]

I dunno how they control it but they burn the Sugar Cane fields before harvesting.  We get ash 10 miles east from it.
It's spread on the left hand side of the plant just before you see the building come into frame.  It's a few stories tall looking from the road I think.

[mike_belben]

I saw some huge intentional fire piles going out in the everglades when i was hauling stone down in 2020.  

I think theyd be wiser to grind it back in.

[Mooseherder]

It's possible they do that but I've never asked.  The ground is black like coffee grinds but much lower than the road.  I've always wondered if they've gone too far down but they wouldn't ruin the land would they?  I think a good portion of the plant stays in the field.   The truck is full of cane that looks like 2 to 4 foot brown stalks with no green in the load.  If you get sod from out there it has a black bottom.

[mike_belben]

I couldnt tell ya..  Saw enough gators to keep me pretty close to the rig.  ;)

[Mooseherder]

Our gator is still here.  I've never had one stay this long.  He goes in between our pond and neighbors pond.  I didn't see him for a week or so and thought he had left but nope. Still here!

[TroyC]

I dunno how they control it but they burn the Sugar Cane fields before harvesting.  We get ash 10 miles east from it.

In south Florida below Lake Okeechobee I think the fields are just lit and they let the entire tract burn. Roads and firebreaks between the fields would contain the fire. They are huge. On Highway 27 you drive south from Okeechobee for an hour and a half and as far as you can see both sides of the road, sugarcane.
Yep, a few gators there . Sometime you see a dead one on the road. The live ones won't bother you unless you go out of your way to get in their territory.

[Raider Bill]

The growing process there is amazing. 
We like to ride down that way and around lake O. 

[Mooseherder]

When I used to ride I always enjoyed a ride around the Lake.  One hole-in-the-wall roadside place had an awesome fried pork chop sandwich.  Another place had a slanted floor so the rainwater could rush into the canal.  It also had a Pet Spider on the Bar.
I think Watermelon harvest is around the corner.

[Mooseherder]

I just drove by the fields and processing plant again.  Looks like they leave most of the dried grass spread out on the harvested field and work it in after it dries more.  This processing plant is a cooperative.  There is another plant in the distance that appears to be of the same size of probably a competitor.

[mike_belben]

not being able to see the lake drove me nuts and on like my 5th trip down there i finally parked the rig on the shoulder, climbed the berm and took a glance.  yup, looks like the ocean.

bellybutton of florida.

[Mooseherder]

Half way down the Eastern Side on 441 at Port Mayaca you have a great view of Lake Okeechobee.  You can stop there and hang for a while if you have time.  There is a road you can drive up the side of Dyke.  The Florida walking trail not too far from there also.

[mike_belben]

This was when i was driving a semi.  I hardly leave home these days.  

[Mooseherder]

Well you ain't missing much but you never know when you may pass that way again on the way to Miami at the Clubs. ;)   :D

[kantuckid]

One of our sons has a new startup company that will use sugar cane as the stock to make plastics. (The "used stalks are made into items like fiberboard/cardboard, so on.)  Don't ask me how they will make the plastic as I'm no chemical engineer, like my KY boy. His company won a recent California contest for innovative companies and gaining bigtime investors faster now as he looks for a plant site. A logical move away from fossil fuel.  
I read just this week that the black Frenchman who invented the process to make granulated sugar from cane in like 1813 made it safer for the slaves who did it back then in kettles and that same "new" process is still in use today! A history tidbit for Black History Month.
Mexico has cane & plants all over the place. Most I've seen is hauled in old dump trucks, not long trailers like in FL, etc.. They were burning cane fields this last week in FL. 

[Don P]

Another history tidbit, the skillsaw was invented for cutting cane.

[SwampDonkey]

Quite the operation and still after 50 years you can buy a 2 kg (5 lbs) bag for under $2 bucks. Sure must be good tax money in the sugar business. I laugh in Walmart, a sign $2.69 a bag over a pallet of bagged sugar, go in the grocery store and $1.69 on pallets. :D What is really wild, is Heinz 5% vinegar, $8.00 a jug. Any grocery store brand, $2-2.50 a jug. Exact same stuff. Get whatever you can. ;D

[kantuckid]

Another history tidbit, the skillsaw was invented for cutting cane.

I thought it was the machete?   :D Same story for the stringtrimmer.
 Another personal theory I have is that string trimmers and chainsaws were invented by hand doctors. 
Personal cane history-I once followed a Mexican sugarcane dump truck with a broken tailgate, in a driving monsoon rain, for many miles on my motorcycle.
As for USA/world sugar prices they are heavily affected by various tariffs and laws around the globe. 
Vinegar has gone way up like most food stuffs. 

[beenthere]

Another history tidbit, the skillsaw was invented for cutting cane.

A source for that info? 
Not doubting it, but the first ones I recall were in the 50's and had a power cord. So thinking the cane (sugar?) cutting would be in the factory?
Just curious... brand was Skilsaw.
Summer of '55 I helped a kid build a house for his father and all cutting of wood was a hand saw. 
A mile up the road, a crew was building a house and had the new fangled Skilsaw. Some envy there.. lol

[Jeff]

Another history tidbit, the skillsaw was invented for cutting cane.

That's a much more logical reason than why the chainsaw was invented!

[Don P]

In 1923 an article appeared in a New Orleans newspaper, stating that a new rotary blade machete for cutting sugar cane had been invented by one Edmund Michael. The article was read by a former Minneapolis real estate salesman, Joseph Sullivan, on the train, while enroute to the Florida land boom of the early 1920's. Salesman Sullivan reversed his direction and went back to NO, looked up Michaels and inspected his rotary machete. It consisted of a tiny rotary saw blade attached to the tip of a machete, crudely powered by a malted milk mixer motor. Sullivan told Michaels that if he would make a sturdier model, capable of sawing wood, he might be interested. Michaels did that and contacted Sullivan again. Michaels decided to name it "Skilsaw" and the men agreed to set up shop in Chicago.

They incorporated July 1, 1924, the Michael Electric Handsaw Company, most of the 25,000 shares subscribed by Sullivan who bought the company in 1926 and changed the name to Skilsaw Inc. The first year saw 400 saws sold at $160, in 1927 2,000. Lightweight die castings in 1929 and 4,000 sold. Then the crash, they expanded tool offerings and in 1935 came out with the model 77, I used to have Dad's. Being a lefty, it had its place but I never liked it, and gave it to a coworker who had another.

That was from Harold Warp's Pioneer Museum, they had a book in the gift shop describing most of the collection, and that man was a collector, we call it the prairie Smithsonian.