The National Sugar Development Council (NSDC) on Tuesday expressed its willingness to partner with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture to boost sugar production.
A statement issued by Ahmed Waziri, the Head of Public Affairs Unit of NSDC in Abuja, said that the council had decided to work with the ministry to turn the sugar sector around.
It recalled that the ministry said recently in a report that it had been mandated to develop industrial sugar to complement the present sugar cane farms cultivated by farmers.’
The council cautioned that the production of sugar cane by farmers was not the problem of sugar production as? farmers were ready to produce with little help.
It noted that the problem had always been“the take off of the canes’’ produced by farmers.
“This is the direct result of low and inadequate milling capacities for cane in the country.
“Given the peculiar nature of the cane crop which is easily denatured if not processed as soon as it is harvested, milling facilities must be sited close to the farms, otherwise sugar recovery would be significantly affected.
“Empowering the farmers to produce when the processing end has not been fully worked out amounts to repeating mistakes of the past.’’
Noting that the Minister of Agriculture recently entered into an agreement with a Chinese firm to supply 100 units of rice mills to major rice growing regions of the country, the statement called for similar strategy to be adopted for?? sugar cane.
“To leave out the cane mills from the onset while empowering farmers to produce canes will not achieve the desired goal.
“It is in the light of that the council welcomes the offer of collaboration by the agriculture ministry.’’
The statement noted that the council had developed a sugar master plan, and the Minister of Trade and Investment had been pushing for its implementation.
?