Adding Value to Sugar Crop Trash and Byproducts

By Sandra Avant, ARS Office of Communications

The old adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” can be taken literally when it comes to residual material from sugar crops such as sugarcane, sweet sorghum, and sugar beets. Louisiana leads U.S. sugarcane production—growing 400,000 acres or 48 percent of total U.S. acreage—and it produced 43 percent of U.S. cane sugar in 2016.