Rains delay harvest and credit restriction hinders sugarcane planting in Bolivia

The inclement weather, associated with extraordinary rains out of season in the sugarcane-influenced areas, delayed the grinding and processing of sugarcane in the Santa Cruz sugar mills for more than 30 days, while the limitation of access to productive credits slows down the expansion of the departmental sugarcane agricultural frontier. As of the 15th of this month, data shared by sectoral sources show that after two and a half months of harvest -this process in the field lasts for six- the five Cruceño mills (Guabirá, Aguaí, Unagro, San Aurelio and La Bélgica) have managed to grind 2.3 million tons of cane, of the 8.5 million available in the field for milling this year. That is, the cane cut reaches an advance of 27%. The tailback of the paralysis in the cane cut, due to the flooding of the land, also affected the production scales, estimating 2.8 million quintals produced. 25% of the projected expectation this year. Under normal weather conditions, to deduce from the sources ...