Farmers are harvesting sugarcane around the state, but when harvest season winds down, some farmers may be left with a surplus of sugar they cannot sell.

The surplus would result from marketing allotments imposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

USDA Secretary Ann Veneman recently announced the allotments as a means to help, not hurt, farmers, according to Dr. Mike Salassi, an economist with the LSU AgCenter.

“It doesn’t allow a lot of excess sugar on the market that’s going to drive the price down. So its primary purpose is to keep the price up,” Salassi explained.

The allotment the USDA issued to Louisiana could mean farmers may not be able to sell up to 20 percent of the sugar they harvest this year.

“For Louisiana, the state was allocated 1.37 million tons of raw sugar,” Salassi said. “The estimate of the amount of sugar that is out in the field that will be harvested is about 1.5 million or 1.6 million.”

But there are factors that could affect the allotments – and allow farmers to sell more sugar.

“One of the factors is that the marketing allotment is adjusted or can be adjusted every quarter or sooner,” Salassi said. “So we’re hoping as we go through the season the (USDA) secretary will raise the allotment and allow more sugar to be marketed.”

The allotments do not go into effect until Tuesday, so any sugar sold before then would not be counted.

In addition, Hawaii and Puerto Rico received allotments, but they are not expected to produce much sugar, so Louisiana farmers could receive some of those allotments. And in the event that farmers are unable to sell all of their sugar, it can be stored and marketed next year.

Louisiana farmers are harvesting around 500,000 acres of sugarcane. They expect to get around 20 cents per pound. In 2001, Louisiana farmers produced more than 3.1 billion pounds of sugar from 494,000 acres. In total, the economic impact of sugarcane meant nearly $620 million to the state last year.