Africa-Press – Eswatini. Eswatini Sugar Association (ESA) is once again expanding market access for smallholder sugarcane growers (SSGs) by ensuring that their sugarcane production processes are compliant with domestic and international law standards.
According to ESA Chief Executive Officer, Banele Nyamane, this was the driving force behind the ESA’s annual Smallholder Sugarcane Growers Competition.
This year marks the 19th edition of the competition whose awarding ceremony will be held at Phumulamcashi Community Training Centre in Siphofaneni tomorrow.
The competition’s key objectives are to recognise well performing SSGs and encourage them to share best practices so that they remain productive, profitable, and sustainable.
“All growers with an area less than 50 hectares on Swazi nation land title deed land and Vuvulane farming area are eligible for the competition, and the winners come from all three of these sub-categories,” said Nyamane.
He further outlined that SNL growers contributed at least 85 per cent of the total SSGs sector sugarcane production.
The competition was inspired by the Eswatini sugar industry’s quest to attain new markets, therefore, served as an inclusive and proactive response to the need to demonstrate to customers and sugar users that local sugarcane production processes are performed sustainably.
He added that sugarcane production processes were also socially and environmentally compliant with both domestic and international laws and standards.
“Our aim is to ensure that the industry is compliant with international standards, and this is one such step towards achieving certification for all our growers through inculcating the culture of self-assessment,” Nyamane said.
He said ESA through the technical services department had developed a sustainability tool for growers to assess themselves on production/productivity, social and environmental compliance.
“The score attained from the assessment is then used collaboratively with the productivity score (annualised tons sucrose per hectare (TSH/AN)) to rank the growers,” he said.
He said the competition inculcated in SSGs a culture of self-assessment and provides a platform through which all sugarcane growers can obtain certification.
“In this way the sugar industry gets to be compliant to international standards,” said Nyamane.
He said the growers used a ‘Best Management Practice Manual’ in the production of sugarcane to ensure that they were in line with ESA’s sustainability programme.
“This in turn then feeds into the corporate strategy in ensuring that there is enough sugarcane for sugar production to service our respective markets,” said Nyamane.
Explaining the historical development of the competition, Nyamane stated that at its inception in 1994, only 13 growers participated. However, since that time, the number of growers who participated in the competition had gradually risen to over 400 annually.
“The value of prizes has increased over the years to over E400 000. The prizes initially included only production inputs, farm machinery and equipment.
In recent seasons, the focus has shifted to capacity building with the winners having been upskilled on a wide range of courses to ensure that the sugarcane farming business remains viable and sustainable,” said Nyamane.
Adding, he said to remain competitive, ESA needed to ensure that the growers were supported to remain in production and achieve higher yields.
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