Labor shortages and rising costs have led to an increase in the amount of standover cane during the 2022 and 2023 seasons. In 2022, the total standover cane reached 26,040 tonnes, with 82 percent of this attributed to issues related to labor availability or costs that farmers could not afford.
Bhan Pratap Singh, CEO of the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC), reported that for the 2023 season, the standover cane rose to 28,575 tonnes, marking a 10 percent increase from 2022. Singh highlighted that 93 percent of the cane was left unharvested due to labor-related challenges. Notably, 87 percent of the standover cane was sourced from hilly and undulating terrains, where mechanical equipment could not operate effectively.
“Manual harvesting still constitutes approximately 50 percent of the total cane harvest,” Singh mentioned in the FSC 2024 annual report, indicating a decrease to around 5,000-6,000 active cane cutters. Farmers have struggled to find laborers for harvesting tasks on their farms.
FSC is collaborating with the Ministry of Sugar Industry to introduce specialized harvesters for challenging terrains between now and 2025. Singh noted that manual harvesting accounted for 42.2 percent of total cane collected in the recent season, which was a 5 percent increase compared to 2022.
In 2016, only 8.9 percent of cane was mechanically harvested, but there has been considerable progress over the past seven years in both the number of harvesters available and the volume of cane harvested. “The fleet has increased by 92, with mechanical harvesting now accounting for 42.4 percent of total production, reflecting the urgent need for advancing mechanization in sugar cane farming,” he stated.
The crop for the 2023 season was reported at 1.57 million tonnes, coming from a harvested cane area of 32,285 hectares, supplied by 10,565 growers, with an average yield of 47 tonnes per hectare.