daniel chigunwe
Patience Maturure
Agriculture Reporter
SUGAR cane farmers in Chiredzi are concerned over high cane milling charges, which reportedly chew 23 percent of their gross revenue thereby compromising the profitability of their operations leaving them unable to break even.
Hippo Valley Productive Sugarcane Farmers Association (HVPSFA) chairman, Mr Patrick Muvingi called for the lowering of the charges to make sugar farming profitable.
“At 23 percent of gross revenue, the milling charges are very high and leave the farmer with very little to meet other production costs.
“Farmers are also saddled with other challenges such as the absence of reliable seasonal input support schemes, lack of affordable agro-inputs, unreliable electricity, inadequate irrigation water, exclusion from ethanol project, yellow sugar cane aphid and lack of certified seeds,” he said.
Tongaat Hulett corporate and industry affairs head, Dr Dahlia Garwe, however, observed that milling charges pertaining in Zimbabwe are the lowest in the world.
“This can be factually established by comparing ratios in other sugar producing countries in the region and beyond,” she said.
Dr Garwe said while her organisation had been able to assist farmers with inputs on a cost recovery basis, that has not stimulated production owing to high prices of inputs on the market.
“Sugar cane farmers have not benefited from Government support unlike other crops such as wheat where there is command assistance, though sugar cane is categorised as a strategic crop,” she added.
Over the last five years there has been an increase in area under sugar cane with new land being opened to accommodate new out grower farmers. This horizontal growth is, however, not in tandem with existing irrigation infrastructure.
She added that erratic supply of electricity was impacting sugar cane production through disrupted irrigation scheduling, which leaves over 40 percent of farmers using diesel powered irrigation.
“With the current national power generation constraints, irrigation-driven agriculture is hugely impacted causing a decline in yields and sugarcane is no exception. Farmers failed to meet their irrigation cycles due to load shedding with the situation also exacerbated by particularly high temperatures experienced in the Lowveld,” she noted.
Dr Garwe said around 90 percent of farmers were on the cane purchase agreement, which means they cannot participate in any processes that follow the disposal of their cane to the miller.
“Ethanol is a value-added product and it would be difficult to determine how benefits can accrue to farmers who would not have participated in the additional facilities for value addition. Electricity is generated from a by-product of the milling process and is used to drive the milling itself, thereby driving down the cost of milling,” added Dr Garwe
There have been some interventions through the Zimbabwe Sugar Association Experiment Station to address the yellow sugar aphid incidences. A lot of training and herbicide-assistance were part of the interventions, which helped bring the situation under control this season.
To ensure the availability of certified seeds, Tongatt Hullet is currently assisting farmers with certified seed cane although that in not enough given the growing number of such requests.
“There is engagement with Government for the allocation of land for seed nurseries by the research station. If this materialises, it will alleviate demand for certified seed cane by farmers, which will ultimately improve yields,” Dr Garwe pointed out.
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