Sugarcane farmers in strife
SUGARCANE growers staring into the twin barrels of surging costs and India’s wanton anti- competitive dumping practices are facing the end of the 2018 season with rising levels of uncertainty about what the future holds.
Burdekin grower Joe Lago summed it up by saying that prices for raw sugar were not high enough to sustain the industry.
Like his fellow growers he is angry about India dumping five millions of tonnes of sugar on to the world market.
Mr Lago said growers were receiving between $ 450 and $ 320 a tonne for raw sugar, which in his view was not enough.
“You need $ 450 to just poke along. If the industry continues along this track, then it is going to become pretty bleak,” he said.
Mr Lago predicted that unless there was a major correction that put farmers back into the black, the industry would continue to slide backwards. He said factories would close and growers would look more and more at diversification.
He said farmers gave away every advantage they had when deregulation started to strip the industry of its independence and power in 1983. This erosion of the controls growers, millers and marketers had continued up until 2006 when the final deregulation nail was hammered home. Mr Lago painted a picture of an industry gutted of power.
“We sacrificed a lot with deregulation. We were told the world had to be a level playing field and now we’ve got India dumping millions of tonnes of sugar on to that level playing field,” Mr Lago said.
Chairman of the Global Sugar Alliance and managing director of Queensland Sugar Ltd Greg Beashel said that India’s actions would have “huge impacts on markets”.
“The price goes down a lot and the world is now well below cost of production,” he said.
Canegrowers chairman Paul Schembri was confident the Federal Government would soon be in a position to advise on what could be done to curtail India’s dumping.
He said he was meeting with Agriculture Minister David Littleproud yesterday afternoon and would be making the sugarcane industry’s position on India “very clear”.
He said Australia understood Indian farmers were being subsidised to the tune of $ 50 billion by their government.
“This sort of action keeps dampener on prices,” he said. a