Florida’s sugar is ready to be harvested in about three weeks. It’s a more than $3 billion industry in the state spanning from Hendry County to Palm Beach County. With Hurricane Irma expected to make landfall in South Florida this weekend, University of Florida’s Gene McAvoy says the sugarcane should survive the storm.
"Sugar is pretty resilient," he says. "It won’t blow away, but it often will lodge and lay down so you will incur some loss. If you get a lot of sunshine and dry weather after, it'll try to stand back up. But again you will lose something."
He says another possibility is floods could rot the sugarcane crop, making it impossible to harvest.
