Wildfires rage in sugar cane fields in Brazil's southeast

SAO PAULO, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Wildfires blazed through sugarcane fields in northern Sao Paulo state on Saturday, sending up clouds of smoke that covered nearby towns so thoroughly that officials prohibited outdoor sports.

A soccer match of the Brazilian championship was canceled due to the ban in Ribeirão Preto, a city in the most critical region in the west of São Paulo state.

Some state highways were closed due to reduced visibility. Local television showed images of corpses of cattle that had died in fields from heat and smoke inhalation.

"The firefighters are unable to control the flames. We can't do anything," farmer Silvio Dantas, 56, told Reuters, on his field as a column of gray-white smoke rose on the horizon.

"The fire has burned plants, destroyed houses and killed cattle. This is very tough," he said,

The São Paulo government said 36 cities were on "high alert" due to fires that have spread at the peak of the dry season when fields are parched and temperatures high.

"We are chartering planes to spray water in addition to fire department aircraft," said São Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas, who set up an emergency task force to deal with the situation.

On Friday, in Urupes, near Ribeirão Preto, two firefighters died while trying to extinguish flames in a sugar mill in an area where 200 hectares of sugar cane plantation were destroyed.

Raizen the world's largest sugarcane processor, said operations at one of its plants in Sertaozinho had been halted since Thursday due to fires in the sugarcane fields.

In São Paulo, 350 km to the south, Brazil's largest city, smoke filled the sky on Friday, but had cleared on Saturday.

Brazil's wildfire season typically peaks in August and September. This year wildfires started unusually early in Pantanal, the world's largest wetlands, in late May, while the number of fires in the Amazon rainforest surged to a two-decade high for the month of July, government data showed.