Drought scorches Brazil's northeast sugar cane crop

SAO PAULO: One of the worst droughts in three decades will slash Brazil's northeastern sugar cane crop this season by as much as 30 percent in some areas, said leaders of the cane industry in the region, which is in the midst of crushing.

Brazil's north and northeast regions only account for about 10 percent of national cane output, but the crop is an important source of sugar and ethanol at home and abroad when the main center-south crop is idle between harvests.

The region, which began harvest in September in Alagoas, typically crushes cane to produce sugar and ethanol through March, just as the center-south starts up harvest of the new crop. But this season, operations will end sooner.

"There's not enough cane, so we expect to end crushing in February," said Jorge Torres, technical director at the cane industry association Sindacucar in Alagoas, the northeast's main cane producing state.

He said that the northeast would produce only 52 million tonnes this season, down 10 to 15 percent from the record 62 million tonnes last crop. Sugar output from the region would also fall by the same percentage from just over 4 million tonnes from the last crop, he added.

Rudson Sarmento, the technical coordinator at the Alagoas Cane Suppliers Association, said the state would see a 20 to 25 percent drop in cane output due to the drought this crop.

"We got only 30 percent of the normal rainfall this past year," Sarmento said.

Cane production in No. 2 producer state in the region, Pernambuco, which begins harvesting in the coming weeks, will be even worse.

"This will be the worst crop since 1982-83," said Paulo Giovanni, technical vice-president of the Cane Suppliers Association of Pernambuco (AFCP).

Giovanni said Pernambuco's cane output would fall 30 percent from 23 million tonnes to 16 million tonnes this year.

"We saw a 40 percent drop in rainfall this past season and April, when we apply fertilizer, was particularly dry," he said.

Brazil's main center-south cane crop, which accounts for 90 percent of the country's cane and sugar output, is in the final weeks of its harvest. It will crush 512 million tonnes of cane, according to industry association Unica. That would be up modestly from 493 million tonnes last year, when output in the region dropped for the first time in a decade.