Writes Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City.
The ongoing scrambling for raw cane from the farmers by millers in the Nyanza Sugar-belt is a blessing in disguise to the growers who for many years have been subjected to a lot of suffering, delayed harvestings and other injustices.
Three sugar milling companies are currently engaged in the war of attrition over cane harvesting zones with claims of intensified poaching of raw materials and encroachment on each other’s cane growing scheduled zones.
The Millers involved in the cane harvesting war include the Chemelil Sugar Company, Muhoroni Sugar Mill and Kibos Sugar and Allied Industries based at Kibos in the outskirt of Kisumu City.As the result of competition, the prices of row can has gone up with Kibos paying Kshs 3300 per tone, while Chemelil is paying Khs 3200 whereas Muhoroni Sugar mill is paying Khs 3100 per tone.
The two factories Chemelil and Muhoroni are public owned enterprises, while Kibos Sugar and Allied Industries is privately owned by a family of entrepreneurs. The latter is much more aggressive to an extent that it has constructed and established cane yards in places previously considered as exclusively Chemelil Sugar Company’s vane growing zones.
Kibos Sugar and Allied Industries has established weighbridge and cane-yard near Awasi only a few kilometers from Chemelil Sugar Factory and another at Chepsweta on the main Kisumu-Miwani and Chemelil road also approximately about eight kilometers from Chemelil sugar factory, an action which observers viewed as aimed at encircling Chemelil and preventing the factory from receiving row cane from its cane growing zones.
But the management of Kibos Sugar and Allied Industries has responded with argument that they are acting within the law taking into account the recent liberalization process. The liberalization process now allows a cane farmer to sell his crops to whichever factory or whoever he wished to do business with.
But the crux of the matter is the competition over the prices and the mode of payment. Kibos sugar Factories pays the farmers promptly on delivery of the row cane. It takes less than three weeks for the farmer to collect his cheque once his delivery is confirmed.
In Chemelil and Muhoroni the payments now takes up to one month. In the old days, this could take as many as six months long after the delivery is made, cane crushed into made sugar and sold to the consumers before the farmer received his money.
The situation is made difficult by the fact that Kibos sugar factory has got no nucleus estate farm of its own, and depends entirely on out-growers in other factories growing and harvesting zones in the outlaying districts prompting the outcry of “cane poaching”.
During its construction, the investors ignored the laid down rule and regulations, which require explicitly spelt out that a new sugar processing factory must be established in distant of 40 kilometers from the existing facility. This is the rule set out by the Kenya Sugar Board and well entrenched in the Sugar Act an article of Parliament.
The flagrant defiance of this particular clause of the Sugar Act is also the main source of the prolonged court battle between the Western Kenya Sugar Factory and the newly established Butali Sugar factory in Kakamega in Western Province which has seen a protracted legal battle through courts.
The other source of the ongoing discontent is the hurdles facing Muhuroni and Chemelil sugar companies. The firms had advanced the farmers in their harvesting zones with cane development loans for cultivations, land preparation planting, seedling and weeding in the form of loans, which are only recovered after the farmers had their cane harvested by the loaning company and delivered their row cane to the particular factory.
The same cane crop if harvested and delivered, crushed in another factory, the sugar company which had funded the cane development in the field loses its money as it cannot have the right of deduction of the same.
This has been the contentious issue, which required the government to move in with speed before the issue developed from bad to worse. The government, particularly the Ministry of Agriculture must come out with a clear-cut-policy on cane harvesting and delivery.
Concerted effort by the stakeholders to have the issue sorted out and harmonized has hit the rock. A hastily called meeting of the stakeholder recently held at Soliat in Belgut constituency and chaired by the Kricho District Commissioner turned chaotic and near violence. The meeting was also attended by the outgoing KSB board member from Chemelil/Nandi Zone, Muhoroni
The Kericho DC Samuel Njora was menacingly confronted by of rowdy and angrily farmers of Zoin zone in his district when he tried to impress it upon them to take their canes to the government-owned millers, Chemelil and Muoroni factories.
The administrator had convened the meeting to bring harmony, following a recent standoff pitting security agents and farmers who were defiantly ferrying their canes to other favorite millers instead of making delivery to the government-owned factories of Chemelil and Muhoroni.
It took political magnanimity and quick action and intervention of the former cabinet Minister Eng Kipng’eno Arap Ng’eny and local civic leaders to cool down the flaring tempers before the meeting could proceed.
But after two and half hours of the standoff the meeting kicked off with speaker after speaker castigating the DC and accusing him of being partisan in resolving the ragging zonal dispute bedeviling the rival millers Kibos, Chemelil and Muhoroni.
The two millers Chemelil and Muhoroni have been castigating Kibos Sugar and Allied Industries Ltd for encroaching into their cane growing zones causing superficial an artificial cane shortage.
The two outgoing Kenya Sugar Board directors Nicholas Oricho and David Kadongo whose areas zonal are dogged by zonal dispute also attended the meeting and took issue of liberalization of cane with the DC for allegedly being partisan in solving the prevailing wrangles.
Observers, however, maintains that the only sensible course of resolving the ongoing zonal war in the Nyanza sugar-belt is to allow the factories which had loaned or advanced the farmers with cane development cash loan recover their money before the liberalization take its effect. In the absence of a well defined rule, the factories like Chemelil and Muhoroni stand to lose millions.
The Kibos sugar mill has installed another weighbridge at Chepsweta and also near Awasi to save cane farmer from the Nandi zone with rigorous of transport and also to avert spillage in Awasi Township.
The scrambling over row canes has of late become incentive to the growers and made sugar cane as one of the highly valued cash crops. And the competition could even be worse once the currently out of production Miwani Sugar Mills in its zone is revived.
But farmers say they were happy, because they can now expect a visit by agents of the millers at their own step exploring the possibility of having their cane harvested. They are everywhere even looking for premature cane crops. They come with a couple of kilos and a few shillings in hand for the purpose of persuading the cane farmers to allow them to harvest his field unlike in the old days when they millers were asking for bribe money before any talking of harvesting cane from a famer’ field is initiated.
It is now the turn of the Millers to bribe their way in order to get immature cane to harvest for their factories which are reported to b running at half their daily turn out and crushing capacities.
The Awendo-based SONYSUGAR would soon find itself to a similar situated when the new factories currently being established in Ndhiwa and in Trans-Mara district goes into production next year.
Ends