A shortage of labor and increasing costs have led to a rise in standover cane for the 2022 and 2023 seasons. In the 2022 season, there were 26,040 tonnes of standover cane, with 82 percent linked to either labor shortages or high labor costs that were unaffordable for farmers.
Bhan Pratap Singh, the chief executive officer of the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC), reported that in 2023, the total standover cane rose to 28,575 tonnes, marking a 10 percent increase from the previous year. Singh noted that 93 percent of the cane was left unharvested due to labor-related challenges. Additionally, he indicated that 87 percent of this standover cane originated from hilly areas where mechanical harvesters cannot operate, making manual harvesting difficult.
According to Singh, manual harvesting currently accounts for about 50 percent of the total cane harvest, but the workforce has dwindled to around 5,000 to 6,000 cane cutters. He emphasized that farmers are struggling to find laborers for harvesting their crops.
The FSC is reportedly collaborating with the Ministry of Sugar Industry to introduce suitable harvesting equipment for hilly terrains between now and 2025. Singh pointed out that manual harvesting contributed 42.2 percent of total cane harvested this season, reflecting a 5 percent increase from 2022.
Notably, in 2016, only 8.9 percent of cane was mechanically harvested, but there has been substantial progress in the past seven years. The number of harvesters has increased by 92, and the volume of mechanically harvested cane reached 42.4 percent of the total crop, underscoring the urgent demand for the mechanization of sugar cane farming.
The crop for the 2023 season totaled 1.57 million tonnes, harvested from an area of 32,285 hectares by 10,565 growers, resulting in an average productivity level of 47 tonnes per hectare.