Last year’s drought is having a major impact on the Rio Grande Valley's sugarcane industry, experts said.

This year, sugar production will be 25 percent lower than previous years, experts said.

"We're the only sugar-producing region in the state of Texas,” said Sam Sparks III, with SRS Farms.

Sparks and his family have been growing sugarcane in the Valley since the 1950s.

“I feel very privileged to be a part of this heritage that we have,” Sparks said.

SRS Farms is one of 126 sugarcane growers in the Valley. More than 160,000 tons of raw sugar are produced in the in the region every year. Sparks said this year’s output will be lower.

“Yields are off a little bit, but production itself is down because the number of acres to be harvested is down,” he said.

He said the recent drought made it tough to grow sugarcane.

“A lot of growers have had to make the shift to other crops or even leave land idle because of the lack of irrigation waters,” Sparks said.

Growers who didn't shift their crops faced other challenges.

“Our insurance companies would not allow us to grow the sugar without having water to supply to the cane,” he Sparks said.

Sparks said some growers were forced out of the business.

“We need to have somewhere around 45,000 acres here in the Rio Grande Valley to supply sugar going through our sugar mill. Right now, we're somewhere around 33,000 to 34,000 harvestable acres,” he said.

“Our production, as a whole, will be down for the next couple of years until we can get that acreage number back up,” Sparks said.

Sparks said sugar prices are expected to go up in the next couple of years. He said that is bad news for consumers, but it's great for sugarcane growers.

“With the outlook of sugar coming up, we should be able to get some more growers to plant more cane in order to protect the future of the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Mill,” he said.

He said recent rains also are attracting growers back to the fields.

Source - http://www.krgv.com/