Mail & Guardian reporter
Sugar is not dubbed KwaZulu-Natal’s white gold for nothing it employs thousands of that province’s people, but also ploughs back in kind to deserving groups and communities.
The sugar industry employs about 85000 people and an additional 400000 largely small-scale farmers and cane growers depend on the industry for an income.
The 53000 sugar-cane growers produce more than 23-million tons of sugar cane from 15 mills in supply areas extending from northern Pondoland in the Eastern Cape to the Mpumalanga Lowveld.
A growing number of medium-scale farmers are entering sugar-cane agriculture on farms that the major milling companies have made available at market-related prices.
The South African Sugar Experiment Station, which was established in 1925, is the only privately funded research organisation in agriculture in South Africa and provides cane growers with specialist advice on all aspects of sugar-cane production including new varieties, agronomy, pathology and entomology, crop nutrition, and soil and agricultural engineering.
According to Kathy Hurly, scientific liaison manager, the essential link between the station’s wealth of scientific expertise and individual commercial cane growers is provided through extension officers who are stationed in each of the industry’s 15 cane-producing regions. The needs of the small-scale growers are catered for by a joint extension project between the station and the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture.
The Sugar Industry Trust Fund for Education, founded in 1965, supports 130 rural schools in sugar areas. The fund introduces teacher-support programmes and looks at school development with the aim of improving the quality of schooling in rural areas. In addition, each year 120 students receive financial support towards their academic studies and a number of potential entrepreneurs participate in training programmes.
Umthombo Agricultural Finance, on the other hand, offers financial assistance to more than 50 000 cane farmers in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape. So far it has given more than R220-million in production loans to this sector and will continue to provide financing facilities to economically viable small-scale sugar-cane farmers.
The sugar industry is reported to be generating about R5-billion a year and approximately R1,9-billion in foreign exchange is earned through exports. Production is estimated at 2,5-million tons of sugar a season, and about 50% of this is marketed in Southern Africa. The remainder is exported to markets in Africa, the Middle East, North America and Asia.