High production costs pushing Zim sugar price

Harare, (New Ziana) -There is need to mechanise the sugar cane industry to reduce production costs, which in turn will result in a reduction of the price of the commodity, an expert said on Wednesday.

Zimbabwe Sugar Association Experiment Station senior sugar cane plant breeder Professor Leo Mpofu said this on the sidelines of a familiarisation tour of the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC) in Hatcliff suburb.

Mpofu said there was a general decline in yield in the sugar cane industry over the years due to unsustainably high labour costs.

“As researchers, we were mandated to come up with solutions to reduce the cost of production because that is our biggest enemy,” he said, adding high production costs force the manufacturers to increase the price of sugar.

“Mechanisation has a big impact in reversing the high production cost trend. If you look at those selling their sugar cheaper, they are highly mechanised countries. Brazilians are very highly mechanised, and other countries,” he said

Mpofu added that apart from reducing the cost of production, there was also need to increase revenue by increasing yields.

He said unfortunately pressure from other challenges such as pests, diseases and high costs of importing inputs such as agro-chemicals, as well as the vagaries of the exchange rate, among others, made this difficult.

“Some of these things are beyond our control, but what we can work on as researchers is to make sure we fight things like pressure from diseases and pests for instance, by releasing varieties that have high yield potential.”

Mpofu said pests eat significantly into farmers’ profit margins, making it imperative to adopt modern spraying methods like using drones and small aeroplanes, which are however expensive for local farmers.

He said there was also need for researchers to have modern disease diagnostic devices, which unfortunately are not cheap.

“Also the diagnostic tools that we are using to test for some of these diseases, we are still lagging behind on how to diagnose or test for some of these diseases using modern technologies which is where now public-private collaborations comes in handy,” he said.

Where modern technologies are lacking, Mpofu suggested working with local universities and parastatals that have capacity in those areas, before sourcing from outside the country.

“Today we are at SIRDC we are here to seek partnerships. SIRDC is a public institute, and we are a private sector institute. What strength do they have so that we can come up with those synergies to see how we can work together for the benefit of our Zimbabwe sugar industry?” asked Mpofu.

New Ziana