Florida's annual sugar cane harvest ended Thursday as U.S. Sugar Corp. brought the last of this season's cane from the fields to its newly automated and enlarged Clewiston Sugar Factory.

"The mill will be grinding that through the night," said Judy Sanchez, spokeswoman for U.S. Sugar.

It was U.S. Sugar's first season grinding all of its cane at the high-tech mill, following the closure of its Bryant Mill at Canal Point near Pahokee in 2007. The company harvested 162,725 acres of sugar cane, producing 6 million tons of cane that yielded approximately 612,260 tons of sugar.

That was below last year's 675,000 tons of sugar.

"We were off by 70,000 tons because of the drought and the last stubble that is still out there that had hurricane damage," said Robert Coker, the Clewiston-based company's senior vice president.

Total Florida sugar production for the 2007-08 season was approximately 1.577 million tons, based on figures provided by U.S. Sugar, West Palm Beach-based Florida Crystals Corp. and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida in Belle Glade.

That's below the 2006-07 season, when the companies reported producing more than 1.64 million tons of sugar, but above 2005-06's 1.367 million tons. The overall smaller crop was attributed to the ongoing drought and water restrictions.