(Yicai Global) March 2 -- The Covid-19 coronavirus has wrought havoc by causing delays in the harvesting, planting, crushing and processing of sugarcane in the major Chinese cane-producing Yunnan province in the country's southwest during this peak season for these activities.

Southwest China's main cane harvest runs from January to April, which is also the golden time for the country's cane sugar processing, but this year ripe cane cannot be timely harvested because of the coronavirus and this is not only negatively affecting the progress of crushing and processing, but also next season's planting, and is causing sowing to require much higher workforce costs than in former years.  

Epidemic prevention and control measures with strict restrictions leave workers unable to travel between different areas and migrant farm laborers are thus unable to gain entry to sugar-producing areas. This not only delays the yield, but also the planting of new seedlings and thus the supply of raw materials for local production.

"The company will have to scrape together much, much more this year than in past ones when we arrange for labor to cut and harvest the cane because we will need to implement sound epidemic controls to prevent cross-infection among workers," an executive at Yunnan State Farms Group told Yicai Global.  Subtropical Yunnan is China's largest sugarcane producing area second only to the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region that neighbors it to the east, and State Farms is a large-scale local planter of and dealer in agricultural produce.

"The areas we operate need more than 1,000 harvesters each day and over 70 transport workers, and because of the labor shortage and adoption of prevention and control measures our company will have to pay much higher wages this year than in years gone by," the source told Yicai Global, but offered no estimate of potential capital or production losses.

"Fortunately, the bank has opened a green approval channel for us, and it only took five working days to complete the issue of short-term financing bonds, so the group's working capital has not been cut off," the source added.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Ben Armour