The Sugar Story: Mechanisation faces many challenges

Mechanisation. It is a word representing a significant and challenging step in human development.

It is a step that is in various stages of being the world over, and is arguably nowhere more relevant than in the field, literally, of agriculture.
The South African sugar industry faces a unique set of challenges in taking this step – challenges that pose issues on many levels for the industry itself and its workers.
Environmental pressures and the proposed contributions to the energy market are pushing the industry towards farming practices that favour green-cane harvesting, (‘Why we burn’, Courier, November 29, 2013).
Local cane cutters are not in favour of cutting the cane green themselves.
“Cutting the cane without burning it is much harder. We get paid per ton, and it takes much longer to make up a ton when you are cutting it green,” said cane cutter Zweli Mcineka from Frasers.*
“On some of the private farms where they harvest un-burned cane, the site foremen are very verbally abusive to the cane cutters for being slow, not understanding that it actually takes longer to cut green cane,” added fellow cutter Lungelo Dlamini.*

With the physical demands of green-cane harvesting and the resulting poor productivity from workers, it makes sense from a business point of view that the industry would look to mechanising the harvesting process, though the socio-economic implications are hard to miss.
On the North Coast, a huge number of people depend on cutting cane to earn a living. Outright mechanisation would invariably cost a lot of jobs and leave a lot of people destitute.
Luckily the step towards mechanisation and the step towards a place on the energy market go hand in hand, and the work it will take means a lot of new jobs, which should help to offset job loss due to the mechanisation of cane harvesting, should it take place.
According to South African Sugar Association natural resource manager, Marilyn Govender, “the estimated job creation for the renewable sugar cane fibre technology is 32 786 jobs”.
Another huge challenge facing cane growers in implementing mechanised cane cutting on the North Coast is the topography of the land, according to South African Cane Growers Association communications manager Jayne Ferguson.
The hills in the area are in many cases simply too steep for most large-scale harvesting machines.
In a report by mechanisation specialist Eddie Meyer in the May 2004 volume of The Link, a technical newsletter for the sugar cane industry, the harvester which could operate on the steepest slopes could only manage a 23 percent gradient.
Peter Tweddle, South African Sugar Research Institute (SASRI) agricultural engineer, confirmed there has been nothing on the market since, that can operate on a higher gradient.
Ferguson said that operating costs were another issue for growers hoping to implement these machines. Aside from the ever rising fuel prices, rigid maintenance is needed.
According to Darnall sugar cane farmer David Clewlow, machine blades can also spread the Ratoon stunting disease (RSD), a bacteria that restricts the plant’s ability to carry water and grow.
Although the industry is continually making advancements in mechanisation, the challenges it faces in topography and operating costs, as well as difficulties in shifting farming practices from hands to machines, are a concern, especially as it competes with other sugar industry globally, some of which has already been mechanised to a much further degree.
Imports from the global market are causing the South African sugar industry to sustain heavy losses, resulting in a call for a tariff on imported sugar, which will be explored in next month’s feature on the sugar industry.
*Translated from isiZulu