When asked to report on the status of the Louisiana sugarcane industry, our first thought was "Muddy!" The El Nino effect that kept the Gulf of Mexico clearof hurricanes this autumn brought seemingly endless rains in its wake, with deluge after deluge forcing our growers to decide which soup bowl they were going to harvest each day. In December, we travelled through cane country with Phillip Hayes, coalition coordinator for The Hand That Feeds U.S., an educational resource for urban media designed to highlight the importance of American agriculture to our country's security.

In our visits with growers, often on the roadside or atop the levy holding the mighty Mississippi back from their fields, we asked about hurricanes, El Niño, the threat of a hard freeze in the last days of harvest, the demise of a champion variety, the lack of good risk management tools, and a host of other challenges they face. Despite the long list, and regardless of the specific topic, the farmers invariably answer with a shrug and a comment like, "You just do what's got to be done and hope for better times tomorrow." That "can-do" resiliency, reflecting the hardiness of the cane that has kept our sugar mills fed through storms and droughts for over 200years, is a reservoir of strength and a fountain of practical innovation. Our growers will figure out a way into wet fields because they must. Our mills will process muddy cane because they must. After the harvest and grinding is complete, there is hope for a good price and another good crop next year.

This year may prove to be a pivotal year in the growth and development of robust Louisiana sugarcane industry. Raw sugar producers may receive a decent return from the marketplace this year, which means that our farmers may be able to offset some of the costs of bringing in a huge crop in consistently mucky conditions. Escalating input costs are the biggest obstacle to our efforts to recover from the repeated hits we have taken from Mother Nature. Fertilizer and other chemical applications, fuel and equipment grows more expensive with each growing season and these price increases are doubly damaging to farmers who have to move slowly through wet fields to haul wet cane to the mill. More fuel, more equipment repair costs, and more wear and tear on the machinery virtually guarantee that any price gains achieved in the current market environment probably melted away faster than our one pre-Christmas snow.

And, regrettably, the sugar producers may receive a decent return from the marketplace this year, which means that our farmers may be able to offset some of the costs of bringing in a huge crop in consistently mucky conditions. Escalating input costs are the biggest obstacle to our efforts to recover from the repeated hits we have taken from Mother Nature. Fertilizer and other chemical applications, fuel and equipment grows more expensive with each growing season and these price increases are doubly damaging to farmers who have to move slowly through wet fields to haul wet cane to the mill. More fuel, more equipment repair costs, and more wear and tear on the machinery virtually guarantee that any price gains achieved in the current market environment probably melted away faster than our one pre-Christmas snow.

And, regrettably, the higher tonnage is unlikely to result in an overall increase in raw sugar production compared to the 2008 harvest. The good news is that the mountains of biogases around our mills should be taller than ever- a helpful hint to anyone seeking a readily available renewable energy feedstock. Louisiana's sugarcane industry is looking for new opportunities to achieve greater efficiencies and greater returns from production. Through vertical integration in the sugar business, such as the new joint venture project evolving at Gramercy, or through horizontal exploration of emerging markets for byproducts, the industry leaders are preparing to build on the solid foundation of a 200-year-old industry that is getting more efficient every day. In Baton Rouge, we are working to develop relationships with Louisiana's energy providers in hopes that we can become a viable supplier of electricity for the state. At the same time, controversial energy legislation is being vetted in Washington that creates a new renewable electricity standard that could cement those new relationships. But, with that one exception, we see little in the climate change legislation being debated in Washington that will improve our bottom-line. So while the climate change legislation differs greatly from climate change deals purportedly being cut in Copenhagen, the common denominator seems to be that the American farmer is left out.

In short, our growers face higher input costs under current legislative drafts for growing sugarcane, a C4 plant renowned for exchanging carbon from the atmosphere for oxygen produced in the photosynthesis process, while United Nations negotiators in Copenhagen contemplate a huge transfer of wealth from developed countries to developing countries to assist their farmers in dealing with climate change impacts. In many cases, those developing economies are being driven by highly developed competitors in the sugar and renewable energy markets. Another vital area for improvement involves our risk management tools, or lack thereof. The traditional crop insurance policy has never worked for sugarcane growers but a new group risk policy may provide a better tool for our farmers. With the help of the Risk Management Agency, we must do a better job of educating our producers and the agents that serve them. The new permanent disaster program, which builds upon existing crop insurance programs, offers no reasonable hope to our farmers if and when they are faced with an economic catastrophe. We must find viable alternatives to survive. Research has long been our best risk management tool, offering varietal improvements and agronomic improvements to combat the pests and diseases that flourish in our semi-tropical, but occasionally freezing, corner of paradise. Through our partnership withholder's Agricultural Research Service and the LSU Ag Center, we have placed a high priority on leveraging research dollars to stay one step ahead of the cane borer, brown rust and the other calamities our growers face. In our efforts to build on the success of nearly nine decades of dedicated research, we see the need for dramatic expansion of research into new threats and emerging opportunities.

The energy cane research coordinated at the ARS facility near Houma has led to planting test plots in other southern states, including the Imperial Valley of southern California, and this program has the potential to provide a viable renewable energy feedstock that can grow throughout the southern states, but without reducing our sugar production from the traditional cane belt. To become a vital component of an overall energy plan we believe that it is vital that USDA expand and escalate the current energy cane research program. Such expansion requires a renewed commitment of valuable resources, but the spiraling federal debt , driven lately by financial meltdowns, healthcare reform and emergency spending on two warfronts, is certain to weigh heavily on the minds of appropriators in the coming year. Having just completed a farm bill two years ago, one that has still not been fully implemented, the agricultural community is loath to reopen old wounds and absorb new ones at this stage in the farm bill cycle, but the reality is that budget reconciliation is looming in Congress and agriculture generally bears a disproportionate amount of the costs when the budget axe comes out.

House Agriculture Chairman Peterson recently voiced this concern while alerting the agricultural community that the committee will start hearings on the 2012 farm bill in March of 2010. Peterson stressed that his intention was to produce a 'baseline bill," meaning a farm bill that would fit within the CBO baseline spending parameters for the current programs. Producing abase line bill would allow the Chairman to keep the bill within the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee, but the potential impact of other bills, such as climate change and trade legislation, or other issues, such as nutrition spending, will be difficult to ignore .Meanwhile, WTO trade talks in Geneva edge closer to an agreement that seems certain to lead to lower tariffs and higher quotas for foreign sugar suppliers to the U.S. and to the broader hemispheric market we share with Mexico under NAFTA.

 In Washington, a similar unilateral effort is under way to grant duty-free, quota-free access to sugar imports from Least Developed Countries which, collectively, export nearly three million tons of sugar annually. While many suppliers understand that these multilateral and unilateral actions are likely to erode the benefits of preferential access to the U.S. market, by oversupplying the market and reducing prices for all, our producers see this as another example of negotiators giving away access without seeking reforms to the trade distorting practices that continue to plague the world "dump" market for sugar. While that market may be surging today, because of production shortfalls in major producing countries that have limited their surpluses, the tide will turn and the distortions will remain. It is a time of change, which can be a time of peril and a time of great reward. Our industry is ready to accept the challenges. Through our endeavors in the fields, the mills, the laboratories and the well-worn steps of our state and nation's capitol; but mainly through our will to persevere, we will succeed. James H. Simon is General Manager of the American Sugar Cane League and currently serves as President of the Sugar Association.

Email: jsimon@amscl.org Jack Q. Pettus is Vice President of Government Relations of the American Sugar Cane League and currently serves as Vice Chairman of the American Sugar Alliance. Email: jack@jackpett.us