Production sector
Sugarcane
Sugarcane is a perennial crop harvested in campaigns — the zafra — and planted once to be cut over several cycles: the plant regrows as ratoon crops until yields fall and the field has to be replanted. Unlike other crops, field and factory are one business: the mill schedules cutting, loading and hauling so cane is crushed within hours, because sucrose is lost over time. The output is sugar, molasses and alcohol, and in several countries ethanol and electricity cogenerated from bagasse as well.
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The sector hires on two distinct fronts. In the field: zone managers or grower relations technicians who serve the cane growers supplying the mill, irrigation and fertilization leads, crop protection specialists working heavily with biological control against stem borer and spittlebug, and harvest schedulers and supply logistics planners who build the daily route for crews, loaders and trucks. In the factory: process engineers, chemists and lab technicians measuring pol, Brix and purity shift after shift, mechanical and electrical maintenance staff, boiler operators, and operators for mills, vacuum pans and centrifuges. The spread of mechanical harvesting added steady demand for harvester and heavy equipment operators and mechanics. And it should be said plainly: manual cane cutting still exists and is among the hardest work in agriculture, with migrant crews, long days in the sun and ash exposure where the cane field is still burned before cutting.
Where it is concentrated
In Mexico, cane is concentrated in Veracruz — the Papaloapan basin and the Córdoba area — plus the Huasteca of San Luis Potosí, Jalisco, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Chiapas, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Morelos and Quintana Roo, almost always around a mill that shapes employment for the whole area. The Mexican zafra runs from late fall to mid-year, and outside it the factory goes into overhaul, which makes industrial employment sharply seasonal. Elsewhere the calendar shifts: south-central Brazil crushes through the dry season, from April toward November; Guatemala runs its zafra in the dry season on the South Coast; Tucumán, Salta and Jujuy cut in winter; and Colombia's Cauca Valley and the Peruvian coast harvest essentially year-round.
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