2020 monsoon season is strong in Asia, benefiting sugar cane

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The current 2020 average monsoon rain season in Asia tends to raise sugar production projections for the next 2020/21 season to levels higher than those we have already observed. NASA satellite data reveal the enormous accumulation of water between June 1 and July 20 over parts of Asia, particularly in southern and eastern China, southern Japan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and western Myanmar. Total rainfall exceeded a thousand millimeters in the areas in darkest red (see map) in this 2020 monsoon season.

India tends to initially recover from the level of 28 to 33 million tons in its sugar supply in the 2020/21 season, which starts now in October, two months from now. However, as the monsoons are very strong, above the expectation of local forecasters, levels towards 35 million tons may be observed until the end of the crop. In Thailand, the recovery from the level of 8 to 12 million tons between the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons tends to be a little higher than initially estimated, with real chances that the final volumes of the next crop reach 13.5 million tons.

In China, the scenario tends to have limited growth, since there was no production loss in the previous crop, with the most recent data estimated at 10.7 million and with chances to rise to 10.9 million. Entire regions of India, Pakistan, and China have suffered from record floods given the strong intensity of the 2020 monsoon season in the country, a fact that has even triggered emergency measures such as the opening of the floodgates of the Three Gorges hydropower plant in China in the face of the floods of Yangtse River.