32
World Bank Study
Sugar in Zambia
Three sugar cane estates (Farm A, B, C) and one refinery (Refinery A) were visited in the sugar-growing district of Zambia. The farms varied greatly in size and annual yields. The sugar industry in Zambia is currently entering a large expansion program, with the dominant player in the industry reporting almost a 50 percent increase in production year-on-year. This rapid expansion has led to the conversion of much natural, previously uncultivated land to agriculture. Sugar grown in Zambia supplies virtually all of the domestic market, and is exported to the European Union and the United States. Annual farm yields were found to vary significantly between farms, ranging from 70 to 150 tons cane per ha. Irrigation methods were similar on all three sites, dominated by center pivot systems rotating around circular plots. In addition, some farms contained small areas of canal and sprinkler irrigation. All three farms have converted some or all of their cultivated land from native “bush” vegetation since 1990, which means emissions from land use change had to be included in a PAS 2050 compliant carbon footprint. Furthermore, two farms reported their plans to expand cane cultivation in the near-term, in line with planned expansion of the sugar industry in Zambia. The main inputs to all three farms were fertilizers, applied at least twice per year, but the production origins of fertilizers were not known. No pesticides were reported to have been used on any of the case study farms. Over half of on-farm operations (planting, fertilizer application, and harvest) were carried out manually. On all three farms, harvesting cane begins with field burning in order to remove excess vegetation and snakes, as most cu ing is carried out by hand. Extracted raw sugar yields vary year-to-year according to the percentage sucrose content of cane, averaging around 12 percent of cane weight. The refinery operation visited (Refinery A) was powered by renewable energy in the form of bagasse (the fibrous sugar cane residue), making this a highly energy self-sufficient processing system. At the time of data collection, Refinery A was not exporting outside of Africa, thus export data were collected from suppliers of a nearby refinery. The output from Refinery A is raw sugar. Sugar on Mauritius
Farm D is a long-established sugar estate where conversion of the land to cropland occurred over 100 years ago. The growing cycle consists of 6–7 ratoon years. About 65 percent of the area under sugar cane is irrigated using drip irrigation and pivot systems. During the ratoon years, a CMS (Condensed Molasses Solubles) fertilizer is applied; this is made from vinasse, a byproduct from distilleries, which is naturally rich in potassium. No ripeners or pesticides are used. At harvest, cane leaves are le on the soil surface, and no burning is practiced. Manual labor is employed for planting and the application of base dress fertilizer. The rocky soils on Mauritius make mechanical harvesting impossible. Increasingly, de-rocking operations are carried out in order to remove large rocks and level the land, allowing mechanical harvesting. These operations remove large amounts of stones and use big machinery. Large-scale de-rocking was undertaken on parts of Farm D more than 10 years ago, and fine de-rocking is carried out manually with workers picking up loose surface stones a er planting every 6–7 years. Refinery B uses bagasse as an energy source for the sugar processing, but it also exports energy generated from excess bagasse to the national electricity grid, making bagasse an important byproduct to the sugar processing. Another byproduct from this refinery is molasses, which is then used as an input by rum distilleries. Sugar recovered amounts up to 10 percent of the cane. Data collected from Refinery B include all processes up to the production of white sugar ready for consumption and thus are not directly comparable with Refinery A, which produces raw sugar.