53 000 TONNES SUGAR BEANS NEEDED FOR EXPORT

SIHHOYE – The World Food Programme (WFP) requested Eswatini farmers to supply 53 000 tonnes of sugar beans to the international market and the local market supplied 10 000 tonnes.

This then forced WFP to procure the remaining 43 000 tonnes from outside country. The WFP and the Ministry of Agriculture have an agreement that would enable Eswatini to supply about 53 000 tonnes of sugar beans to the international market annually. Minister of Agriculture Jabulani Mabuza said the country was at the moment, not able to supply the market because local farmers were not able to reach the target. On Friday, while touring the stalls at Mangweni, the minister urged Eswatini Water and Agricultural Development Enterprise (ESWADE) to diversify the land allocated for agricultural purposes to accommodate sugar beans in the Lower Usuthu Smallholder Irrigation Project (LUSIP).

The minister said the market would benefit local businesses as they would supply the product in large quantities, thus generating profit and stopping funds from living the country. Mabuza said this would also contribute to the economy of the country as it would reduce the levels of unemployment. The minister assigned ESWADE, to use the remaining unallocated land (about 300 hectares) to produce sugar beans as the market was available for the country. “The remaining land labelled as ‘other’ in MNWAP should be utilised to address the shortage of beans in the country, we have a market internationally and it requires tonnes of beans annually,” he said. He further urged farmers to concentrate on scarce commodities as they had a better performance in the market.

As a way of minimising the continuous rise of inputs in the sugar industry, the industry has initiated bulk input procurement facilities. This was mentioned by Minister Mabuza on Friday during the SSG entrepreneur’s award competition at Mangweni. Mabuza said this would help in facilitating that growers procured input at competitive prices as well as guaranteed timely delivery, and correct specifications of input assured, benefitting from the economies of scale. He said the Revolving Funds (RF) that were operated by the millers to assist growers in resuscitating their farms through replanting of old ratoon fields were also a very good and much needed initiative.

Mabuza said the eligibility to the RF is still limited to certain growers (Big-Bend and Vuvulane). However, discussions were ongoing to extend the revolving funds to all growers across the industry. “The high energy costs render some of the farms unprofitable since all sugar cane production is done under irrigation. the technical services is facilitating the adoption of energy saving practices like the installation of solar energy through working with services providers and financiers to ensure that growers can be assisted when installing solar energy panels,” added the minister. Mabuza also mentioned that the government and industry were working closely together to ensure that water security was achieved to counter the effects of climate change which come with erratic rainfall patterns such as extended drought periods and heavy rainfall. He said there was a high level committee that was driving this initiative on building more water storage dams.

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