Most farmers don’t stick to burning code

With reference to your article The Sugar Story – Why we burn (Courier, November 29), I recently travelled down the South Coast and was very impressed to find the amount of cane that one sees from the road that was being trashed (harvesting without burning).
There is also an increasing amount of cane being harvested without burning in the area between Ballito and Durban. I surmise that the large sugar companies are heading up this move to more acceptable methods of cane harvesting and we must congratulate them for doing so. They seem to be able to surmount all the problems quoted by farmers against trashing mentioned in the article.
Residents along the KZN coast have had enough of the filthy mess that results from the burning of sugarcane and the weak excuses that farmers who burn continue to espouse. As for the Burning Code I have found out over 15 years of monitoring that it is a joke. It is one of the fobs that farmers and the sugar industry use to placate the complainants but most farmers do not abide by it.
Fortunately the pressure is increasing on the sugar farming community to do the right thing and stop burning and increasingly tough legislation is in the pipeline. The fact that burning has been banned in many countries of the world is sufficient proof that environmental laws in those counties will not permit it. We are entitled to clean air and a clean environment and we will get it.
JOHN EVERETT
Sheffield Beach