Cane harvesting. [Photo/businessdaily]
The rapidly shrinking land for sugarcane farming in the traditional growing areas is a critical issue for the industry. With population ever expanding in these regions land for growing sugarcane has been systematically swallowed up. Families have over the years sub-divided their pieces of land into smaller parcels that can no longer accommodate growing of sugarcane as a cash crop.
The end result is that spaces available for planting large acreages have been squeezed out with many of these families preferring to turn to food crop production for survival and shunning sugarcane growing. However, gazettement and enforcement of the Sugar Regulation Act as announced by Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Willy Bett is expected to help streamline and address some of the most critical issues threatening the industry.
Kenya National Sugarcane Growers Association says sub-division of larger farms into small uneconomical units cannot sustain cultivation of the cash crop. “This means hundreds of potential farmers in the producing regions are increasingly not farming the crop anymore thereby driving another nail in the sugarcane’s coffin,” it adds.
According to the association’s former chairman Ibrahim Juma, this situation has been worsened by delays not only in paying farmers’ dues for the crop delivered to factories for processing, but also exorbitant deductions and debts owed by growers.
They are developed and maintained by the companies to enable them to have reserves of their own crop apart from supplies from contracted farmers. Ironically, virtually none of them have been left to go fallow for any period of time to regenerate. They have been continuously exploited, meaning when a first crop, second and third are harvested after maturity, the land is plowed again and replanted with a fresh cane without any rest.
In the process, apart from expenses being incurred by the investor, farmers contracted to plant sugarcane for the factory are stuck with the crop on their farms yet another nail in the coffin for the sugar industry.