Think outside the Box: Minister Sudhakar
The continued challenges in the sugar industry has now pushed management of the individual stake holding organisations to think outside the box. Speaking yesterday during the launch of the ‘Back to Farm’ initiative by the Sugar Cane Growers Fund, Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources Ashneel Sudhakar said the promotion should not be limited to the Fund only. He added it should be to all the stakeholders and farmers in the agriculture sector. The continued challenges, he said, were in regards to milling, infrastructure, lack of manpower and the world price of sugar has now pushed management of the individual stake holding organisations to think outside the box. “This includes those tenants of the Lands Department,” he said.
Mr Sudhakar said there were about 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of arable sugar cane farming land lying idle.
“If we plant sugar cane at about 35 tonnes per acre, we will get about 2.5 million tonnes of cane.”
New programmes
He said if that was added on to the present crop figure of around 1.8 million tonnes, then the country would be harvesting over four million tonnes of cane, which was what was needed to make the sugar industry viable. Mr Sudhakar added that the Fund was going through transforming and acknowledged the new programmes and initiatives for the benefit of the farmers and industry. “We are a growing economy and sugar cane farming with other agricultural produce gives opportunity to be more agro based as we were 20 years back.
“Sugar Cane Gowers Fund is one of the key players in the industry and has played very important role in a more vibrant way since 1997, when commercial banks stopped loans. Our farmers were able to invest in farms, implements, houses and got children educated. Most of the children after education have moved on which is good but the in some cases farms with loans have been left behind. “Not every farm can be forced sale nor we want to force all the people out of the farms.” Mr Sudhakar said he was informed that in extreme cases the farms were put on mortgagee sales where after a year of reminders and default programmes, such actions were taken.