Sugar News…

[posted 4 Oct 2011,1530]

The four mills crushed 83.802 tonnes of cane in the week ending 3 October.

This brings the total cane crushed to 1.276 million tonnes.

TCTS continues to be high because of poor extraction. The resulting loss to the industry and the farmers is substantial. TCTS the previous week was reported to be around 13.5 tonnes.

Commissioner Western, JoeliCawaki, commented last week that more farmers in the Western Division were opting out of cane farming on account of high  costs and poor return. The same applies to the Northern Divisionfrom where farming families are relocating to VitiLevu.

A survey by NFU revealed that since 2008 over 400 cane farming families had left Labasa to resettle in VitiLevu. Cane production in Labasa has fallen from a high of 871,000 tonnes (2006) to 554,000 tonnes (2010) – a decline of 40%.

Similar decline is noticeable for other milling areas:

   Mill area                 2006(tonnes)             2010 (tonnes)

   Lautoka                  1,033,237                   545,432

   Rarawai                  1,031939                    477,261

   Penang                     289,347                   200,747

In 2006 the four mills crushed a total of 3,225,551 tonnes cane compared to 1,778,014 tonnes in 2010.

LR Vayeshnoi