The demand for sugar cane in Nigeria has increased to about 7
million metric tons as the country stands to gain $1.8billion by developing the
sub sector. Despite the fact that
Nigeria is the highest consumers of sugar in Africa, aside South Africa, we
only have few functioning sugar mills around as most of the sugars we consume
are imported in form of semi-finished product according to National Sugar
Development Council (NSDC) under the Federal Ministry of Trade and investment.
As this sub sector of agriculture is capable of creating
jobs and wealth, a lot still needs to be done in order to harness the potential
the crop can attract in term of wealth to the nation and farmers cum other
stakeholders at the value chains of its production like the Brazil, Mexico, and
India.
There are lot of economic advantages in the industrial and
consumable sugar canes,while the former cannot be chewed because of its toughness, and the later is a regularly
chewing cane that are sold by hawkers with wheel barrow as the water content is so high
and the sucrose content is not economical for sugar production.
As industrial sugar
cane is capable of generating electricity, the roughages that comes out of the it
can also be used to generate electricity through particle board and brisket which
are like coal produced locally like fuel and the ethanol that reduce the cost
of petrol.
Sugar cane sector is
a money spinning investment, you can imagine how many households make use of
sugar every morning coupled the bottling companies. The industrial sugar is in
high demand like crude oil, which also recruits massive population. Apart from
the sugar produced from the industrial sugar cane, there is mollaces, after you
have removed the brown sugar, which is in high demand by the pharmaceutical
companies for syrup production and the brown sugar is also good for diabetic
patients.
The top part of the
sugar cane can also serve as livestock feed; there is no part of it that is a
waste. For example the sugar estate in Nuoman has 1,400 employees, with potential
advantage of providing another 2000 jobs for processed sugar when they finally
swing into full business fully.
The chewing cane also
has its own market advantage as Egypt and India do extract the liquid in for
other derivatives through value addition. We can add value to the chewing cane
and also create employment with it; it is very medicinal and also has rich
elements. But Nigerians are not taking agriculture serious like every other
crop.
Findings revealed that lack of fund to the FMARD has deterred
the growth and production of sugar coupled slow approval is seriously working
against the development of the crop, funding wasn’t available until around July
2014 couple seeds scarcity.
According to him “Industrial sugarcane (seed cane) is very
scare and few in number. it was only Dangote and Savannah Sugar companies that
have industrial sugar cane fields, and that of Dangote produced about
50,000tons as at then, now the sugar cane master plan is a part of the condition
given to the sugar importers as part of measure for operating a backward
integration, which means, they have to establish a sugar cane field that will
employ Nigerians”
He added that “a network of out growers all over the country
and right now the sugar seeds are on the field ready to be distributed to 14
states of the Federation where there is sugar industry either small scale or
big scale like in Taraba- Lau, Adamawa- Numan, Jigawa- Crystal Sugar company,
Ogun- Malcolm Nigeria Limited and Oyo- sugar cane producer association”
“As mentioned earlier we have few mills around, the problem
is that sugar factory is very expensive. The least economical mill of 100 tons
capacity per day cost 300million naira from India, such money is difficult for
small farmers association to afford, although the Bank of Agriculture is there,
but at the same time 10% equity of 300m will be required, which is 30m naira,
that’s without the landing cost, and installation. With the purchase cost being
too expensive and becoming a serious challenge, it is our view that the
equipment should be locally fabricated in Nigeria.”
“ In the past NOTA ,
a skill acquisition program fabricated some of this sugar mills, but it the
efficiency was very low, so many of the people running it, were running at a
loss, because the amount of sugar recovery was 6-8%, whereas the vacuum pan
extraction from India will produce 10% sugar recovery which is economical” said
he
No comments:
Post a Comment