Air Quality Checks & Monitoring

---

  There are multiple  professional-grade air quality monitors in the Glades farming area that provide air quality data and have been providing reliable data showing “good” and safe air for decades (not just “one” operated by the state).

  If people want information about their daily air quality, they get real time information online at www.AirNow.gov just by clicking and entering your zipcode. (0-50 is “good” the best air quality category)

Private professional-grade air quality monitors  located throughout the Glades farming region provide data that has been submitted to Florida DEP for decades that confirms the state air quality air monitoring data showing the region meets all state and federal air quality standards.

In 2021, a new, state-of-the art federally approved monitor was installed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in Belle Glade as part of the state’s planned statewide replacement plan.  It registered even lower PM2.5 particle levels than ever—confirming “good” clean air in the farming region—exactly what all the other monitoring data showed.

 There wasn’t a “concern” about this issue in the Glades until the Everglades Foundation—an activist group started by a New York billionaire—paid the Sierra Club to put an office in Belle Glade and start paying people to be concerned. (Source: Everglades Foundation IRS form 990s showing support for the Sierra Club in Florida). 

 Sugarcane is a very “leafy” crop and as the plant grows up, the leaves around the plant dry up. Controlled pre-harvest burns are the safest way to manage more than 400,000 acres of dry plant material for our communities and our workers—particularly during harvest season.

Sugarcane is a perennial—which means that Florida farmers can get 3 to 4 annual harvests from one planting of the crop. Leaving too much leafy biomass on our rich, water-holding, organic muck soils would make it difficult, if not impossible for the next year’s crop to push up through the leaf material that would be left on the fields without controlled, pre-harvest burns.

Pre-harvest sugarcane burning is regulated by the same state agency – the Florida Forest Service – that works to ensure other lands, including cattle ranches, silviculture areas, state parks and management areas are managed carefully through prescribed fire.

The Florida Forest Service does look to consider whether the wind is blowing East or West as the primary factor in approving a prescribed burn permit for a particular field.  Race, city or socioeconomic status is not a factor in these decisions either.

Despite claims to the contrary, no other state or country provides as much regulation or environmental protection or oversight as Florida in their prescribed burn program, permit approval process or training programs for prescribed burn managers.

Florida is one of the most lightning-prone states in America, and wildfires sparked by lightning are a natural part of the Florida Everglades ecosystem.  EAA farming practices that include pre-harvest burns on sugarcane fields help reduce biomass build up around our Glades farming communities each year – helping to reduce the local risk of out-of-control and deadly wildfires.

  When was the last time you’ve heard of an out-of-control wildfire in Florida? Not anytime recently because Florida progressively burns up fuel for fires, which helps prevent us from having wildfire issues like in places like Hawaii, California or Canada.

 As a result of Florida’s modernized and comprehensive prescribed burn program on both public and private lands  (including controlled pre-harvest sugarcane burns), it is often used as a national and international model for helping reduce the incidence of catastrophic wildfires .

Sugarcane fields in the Glades are 100 percent mechanically harvested using the same harvesting machines used in other states/other countries that practice so-called “green harvesting,” so reports that say Glades farmers do not mechanically harvest its crops are not being truthful.

  Brazil, often used as the poster child for “green harvesting,” still burns 3-4 times more sugarcane than Florida’s sugarcane industry does every year. (Source: CONAB).

The areas of Australia that have soil and climate most like South Florida’s also utilize sugarcane burns in their harvest programs.  Farmers in the other U.S. state that grows sugarcane, Louisiana, also burn sugarcane as part of their harvest or post-harvest process.