SUGARCANE FARMING TUTORIAL/ How to make sugarcane grow faster

In this article, sugarcane farming tutorial, I am going to enlighten you about sugarcane farming process and some unknown informations about sugarcane.

Sugarcane is a plant in a stick like shape, but far bigger than any stick and filled with liquid sugar, that’s how it got it’s name sugarcane. It is a specie of the tall perennial true grass and belongs to the grass family of Poaceae.

It is known by it’s botanical name as Saccharum officinarum and it can grow about 12 to 15 feet tall or more, depending on the type you planted.

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This crop is one of the largest exported agricultural products in the whole world and countries like Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, India, USA, Jamaica etc are the major exporters of this crop.
It can also be used for many industrial purposes,that’s why it is a good export product, I will explain this later in this article.

With the above explanation, let’s dive into the farming tutorial.

Sugarcane is a very lucrative agro business/farming, that’s why many people dive into it without first of all learning about the procedures for growing it.

Before it can be planted and harvested successful and in abundance, there are things you need to have in place and use which are:.

LAND

Land is one of the most important factors you must have before you think of anything farming and sugarcane farming is not exempted!.

If you have good land in place, you can skip the direction below, but if you don’t have, it is for you.
Go and buy or rent land!. To do this, go to the rural areas, as the ones in the cities and towns are very costly to buy or rent. By this, you can minimize your expenses on land and have more profit after harvest of your crop.

If you want to farm sugarcane, wether in commercial quantity or for your personal use alone, you will make in place a good and fertile land. It does well in a land with fertile loamy soil, well-drained, rich in organic matters with a pH of between 5.0 and 8.0.

The land should be located in a tropical area or a place with lots of rain as it requires that to do well, both in growth and in harvest.

Also the issue of wind should be looked into before locating your farm, and enough sunlight should be let into the farm land.

I believe you have gotten your good and fertile land, the next tutorial is on preparation.

PREPARATION OF SUGARCANE FARM

The preparation of the farm land is very necessary in this type of farming, before you will plant your sugarcane.

After you have gotten your land, the next step is to prepare it for cultivation.

First you need to clear the bush and also the dirt’s in the land.
To clear the farm off bush and dirt’s, you need a cutlass to cut down any tree or grass in the farm, a shovel to clear them away, a rake to rake any type of dirt inside the soil like nylon, plastic etc, and a barrow to pack them up and despose them off!.

Or you can use machine like the tractor to clear your farm.
This depends on the largeness of the farm.

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When you are through with the clearing of the farm, plough the farm land of holes of about 8 to 10 inches deep and give a gap or interval of 2 to 3 feet. This is necessary so that the crops will have enough space or gap for themselves and the farm will also be easy to weed when they sprout up.

If you are to use organic manure like animal dungs for this farm, take them and spray in the farm and allow rain to do the rest of the work before planting, If not, plant your sugarcane after clearing the farm land.

PLANTING

When you are through with the farm clearing and digging holes for your plants, the next thing is to go and get your crop to plant.

Sugarcane is one of those crops that do sprout or germinate from both their stem and their cane setts with roots on them.

Go to the market or your neighbor that has this plant in large quantity or anywhere you might get some stems or the ones with roots on them and go and plant them in those hole you made in the farm land, plant them horizontally and cover with sand, leaving some inches of the stem out on the surface, from there, the ones you left part of them on the surface will sprout or germinate.

When they germinate and start growing, take organic manure and pill them around the crops, this will give more nutrients to them and accelerate the growth standard.

WEEDING/PEST AND CONTROL IN SUGARCANE FARM

Whithin some time of planting, in about some weeks or a month, weed will sprout out from many angles in the farm, this is when the spacing you gave the sugarcane is most useful, as you might have to do the weeding manually with hoe, the space you gave will enable you to to the weeding work easily, or you can use weed killer on them if you don’t want to do it manually.
If left alone with much weed in the farm, they might breed diseases and inhabit some pests which might totally destroy the crops.

Also watch out for many types of pests which might attack the crops at any stage, even from the day you plant them till you harvest, make sure pests are checked and controlled.

Pests like Ants are likely to attack when the the crops are newly planted.

Earlyshoot borer is a pest that do attack the crops immediately they are planted.

Internode borer are pests that do attack the sugarcane crops starting from the time the internode are formed and if not controlled till the crops mature.

Caterpillars also attack when they are growing up or fully grown, some birds are also pest because they either feast on the leafs or take them to do their nest.

To contain these pests, like ants and caterpillars, spray insecticide or any type of insect repellent on The farm and for birds, I think scarecrows will do just fine.

Apart from pests, there are many diseases that do attack this crop and if not treated according or controlled might ruin the whole thing including harvest, they are as follows:

Red Rot aslo known as Colletotrichum Falcatum this is one of the most deadly diseases of the sugarcane crop, this has been the reason for the loss of many important varieties of sugarcane. The most obvious or features of this disease is the presence of reddish coloured patches or lesions interspersed with white horizontal patches on the internal tissues.

Ratoon stunting disease: this is the diseases that cause most of sugarcane varietal denigration. This disease resorts to large decline in yields/harvests and germinations.

Pyrilla also known as Pyrilla Purpusilla Walker is the most destructive foliage sucking disease/pest of sugarcane, it is caused or breed through heavy rainfall, high humidity, high temperature and wind movement.

HARVEST OF SUGARCANE FARM

This crop is one of the crops that you can plant and harvest the same year. It is planted during the rainy season and harvested at the end of the year at approximately 8 to 10 months or even 12 months depending on the breed of the sugarcane crop.

At 8 to 12 months, the crops are ready to be harvested or picked, to harvest them, there are two methods, Manual and Mechaniced methods.

To harvest them manually, you need to put on your safety boots and safety cloths before you enter into the farm, so as to avoid the sting of sugarcane leafs and also to avoid dangerous snakes biting you.

You need Cutlass to do the harvesting work and to harvest, cut each of them (sugarcane stems/canes) down closer to the ground.

With the mechanical method, you need to do the harvesting with machines like the harvester.

STORAGE OF SUGARCANE

After harvest, as always,the next step is to store, but just like other agricultural crops, sugarcane is very different from the rest of them because the storage of this crop is very hard or nearly impossible to do.

There might be a good way to store them in the future, but for now, the sugarcane stalk/cane cannot be stored for a a long time like about 2 days or more, it/they will loss nutrients, sugar and even start drying.

But when processed, the liquid sugar in them can be stored.

USES/IMPORTANCE OF SUGARCANE

This article can not be complete without educating on the uses or importance of sugarcane.

There are many importance or sugarcane, in this article, I will group them into 3, they are:

FOOD IMPORTANCE OF SUGARCANE

Sugarcane is a very good source of food and it is used in many countries and nations to make different kinds of foods like – baking of cake, bread, making tea, coffee, buns, chocolate, milk and thousands of more diets you can make with sugarcane.

The cane is also eaten raw and fresh and the sugar is also licked

MEDICINAL USES/IMPORTANCE OF SUGARCANE

Sugarcane is a very good source of Medicine as it has many nutrients like vitamins, which does many work in the body protection, resistance, good eye sight and many more.

It has carbohydrate which is glucose and many more.

In some places, the leaf is used to prepare traditional or natural medicine/cure.

INDUSTRIAL USES/IMPORTANCE OF SUGARCANE

The main reason why sugarcane is very costly, highly demanded and a very good export raw material is because of it’s industrial usage or purpose.

It is used to manufacture many things in the industry, including the ones you don’t know that might shock you.

Sugar is one of the products of this crop when manufactured and it is the most popular among the products of sugarcane plant/raw material.
This is mainly because sugar the main food sugarcane provide, like I stated earlier above, sugar is used to prepare almost any kind or type of food you might think of.
It is very rare to come in contact with any food that does not contain sugar, be it milk, chocolate, cake etc.

Ethanol is another product that is derived from sugarcane when manufactured.
It has been scientifically proven that the type of ethanol derived from sugarcane is much more powerful compare to other ethanols.

Bagasse is one of the products gotten from this plant when manufactured, it is used to do many things like it has biofuel, it is used for making building materials and pulp, it can be used to generate electricity.

Bagasse is gotten from the white substance in the sugarcane after it’s liquid sugar has been extracted a the white substance will be in a fiber like mode.

Molasses is ea by-products of sugarcane juice extraction process that is used in making rums.

It is used in making all kinds of drinks, both beverages, non-alcoholic drinks and alcoholic drinks.

For farmers who are into this farming business, there are u limited opportunities for profit as the cost and demand of this farm product is high, this make it possible for you to determine your sale price thereby making much profit.

CONCLUSION

I hope this sugarcane farming tutorial and it’s uses helps you.

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Reference

Agro4africa.com

Agrifarmblog.in

Guardian.ng