Cutting sugar cane stalks, not burning them, could make money, Belle Glade officials told

The practice of cutting off the tough outer husks of sugar cane stalks as an alternative to burning them off in pre-harvest fires has been adopted almost everywhere the crop is grown.

Known as "green harvesting," it has become part of the production process for sugar industries in Brazil, Australia, Zimbabwe, Belize, Thailand, India and in the Glades, Belle Glade resident Steve Messam told Belle Glade city commissioners this week.

Used in U.S. Sugar's fields bordering a Walmart in Clewiston as well as in Florida Crystal's fields where sugar labeled organic is grown, the method, Messam said, turns the “trash” on the sugar-cane stalks into “treasure,” including fuel, biodegradable products ... and jobs.

More: Burning sugar cane pollutes communities of color in Palm Beach County. Brazil shows another way.

“If you can do it in some fields, you can do it in more fields,” he said during Monday's commission meeting. “It’s a win for the environment, a win for industry, and a win for the economy.”

'We want to present a solution'

Messam is a local pastor, businessman and member of the “Stop the Burn” campaign, an effort that for seven years has worked to draw attention to the harmful effects to health and property that the industry’s eight months of preharvest fires each year inflict on the community.

Last year a long-term study led by researchers at Florida State University showed that pollution released by the smoke shortens the lives of people living near fires. Soot that falls from the sky in the wake of the fires settles on the cars, homes and property of Glades residents who have come to call it “Black Snow.”

Those effects and what Stop the Burn calls the failure of Palm Beach County officials to address them have been the subject of protest rallies by the campaign.

More: Sugar cane fire pollution kills up to three South Floridians yearly, study finds

The focus of this presentation was the good that doing things differently could bring to the community. It included a list of companies interested in working with the industry to turn the “trash” into profitable products.

“We don’t just want to highlight the problem,” Messam said. “We want to present a solution.”

Belle Glade Mayor Steve Wilson, who lobbied in Tallahassee for a law to prevent people most harmed by smoke from sugar cane fires from suing the industry, said he appreciated that.

What he hadn’t liked, he added, was “the negativity” of some of the Stop the Burn campaign’s arguments, which, he said, included discussion of studies saying that smoke from sugar-cane fires was “causing people to die.”

“That’s not the case,” said Wilson, who added that he had never seen the FSU study that linked one to six premature deaths a year in South Florida to breathing air polluted by sugar cane fire smoke.

“It isn’t untrue,” Messam assured him. Wilson accepted Messam’s offer to send him the study.

More: Why Palm Beach County's health department hasn't sounded the alarm on sugar-cane burning

One Belle Glade commissioner says 'We can do it here' on green harvesting; another says it will cost jobs

Commissioner Mary Ross Wilkerson, who has served on the city body since 2009, said she, too, had been a critic of the Stop the Burn campaign until recently, when she learned that green harvesting is already in use in the Glades.

“I also heard it cost jobs. Green harvesting doesn’t cost jobs,” she said. “I had to see it for myself. We can do it here.”

Commissioner Zayteck Marin, elected in March 2023, however, argued that green harvesting would cost jobs and more. Paging through reams of notes, she referred repeatedly to the sugar industry with the pronoun “we,” and noted that with a husband who works for a sugar company, she feels a part of it as well.

The cost of expanding green harvesting, she said, would necessitate massive layoffs.

While saying that workers depending on those jobs “can’t just pick up and leave,” Marin also asserted that green harvesting would drive workers from the community, leaving their homes up for grabs.

“It’s all about gentrification,” she said, predicting: “Palm Beachers are going to come for land, to build things we can’t afford.”

All of that cost and loss were unnecessary, she said, noting that all sugar cane fires require a permit, which would not be granted if smoke from the fires presented a threat.

Permits are not granted, Messam noted, when prevailing winds will blow the smoke and ash east toward whiter and wealthier communities.

Post/ProPublica investigation The smoke comes every year. Sugar companies say the air is safe.

'To move into the future by improving the quality of life'

“I’m hoping a dialogue between the industry and those companies and even our group will follow this,” Messam said. “In almost seven years, we have yet to get a meeting with anyone in the industry.”

A Florida Crystals representative responded to a request for comment with an email noting that the company has used the method to harvest its organic sugar cane for 30 years.

"In addition to the food products we make, Florida Crystals uses the plant fiber to produce renewable energy to power our operations," the company's statement said. "Our biomass renewable energy facility, operational since 1996, is one of the largest of its kind in the country with additional renewable electricity sold to Florida’s power grid. We also use our fiber to make sustainable molded fiber tableware products. The tableware business was developed after many years of research and includes an eco-friendly, proprietary process and has resulted in a major investment in the Glades communities over the past eight years."

U.S. Sugar, which uses green harvesting in fields bordering the Walmart in Clewiston, did not respond to a request for comment.

Messam says he believes making the most of green harvesting would be in keeping with Belle Glade’s mission statement, which he quoted at the start of his presentation:

“To move into the future by improving the quality of life and promoting growth through economic diversification and development of human and natural resources while providing a safe and healthy environment.”

“Why not,” Messam said, “allow the Glades to be the Silicone Valley of green energy?”

Antigone Barton is a reporter with The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at avbarton@pbpost.com. Help support our work: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Belle Glade commission hears pitch for green harvesting sugar cane