The Kisumu County Government wants the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) to flex its muscle in ensuring directive to halt sugar cane milling for three months is fully implemented.
In mid-July this year the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) issued a directive, suspending the milling of cane for three months. The Authority cited a biting sugar cane shortage as the reason for their action.
The AFA acting director, Jude Chesire said cane shortage shortage had led to massive cane poaching and harvesting of immature crop. Only mills in Southern Nyanza were spared because they still had some cane.
In a statement, Kenneth Onyango, CECM for Agriculture, Irrigation, Livestock and Fisheries claimed that one privately owned sugar factory has continued to mill and is harvesting sugar across the sugar belt.
“We want to appeal to all sugar millers to obey the directive from AFA. We are saying this because continued milling will result in cane poaching and harvesting of immature cane as the factory strives to meet its milling capacity,” he said.
“AFA should flex its muscle and ensure that the directive to halt cane milling for three months is respected and adhere to for the sake of sustaining a level playing ground.”
The county management called on farmers to remain patient and persevere within the three months, to enable sugar cane mature to help sustain the demands of the millers.
The closure of the sugar cane factories has led to a rise in prices of Sugar in the country. At the moment, only millers within the Southern Sugar belt are in operation.
Available data indicates that Kenya has 14 milling factories with a national demand standing at 1.01 million metric tonnes against local production of 490,704 metric tonnes, leaving an annual deficit of 521,695 metric tonnes. Kenya has a milling capacity of 14.96 million metric tonnes (41,000 Tonnes of cane per day).
Sugar production capacity for Kenya
At the moment, the current production is 4.75 million metric tonnes, which is 48% of the milling capacity while the country needs to process 9.8 million metric tonnes of cane that can produce 1.09 metric tonnes of the product.
The sugar sector in Kenya supports up to 8 million Kenyans and 400,000 small-scale farmers who produce more than 90 per cent of the cane required by the milling plants in the country.
Sugar Prices Skyrocket in Kenya as Millers Shut Due to Cane Shortage (kenyanwallstreet.com)
