Sucre Ethique - Kenya : Irony of Cane Farmers Being Broke On Pay Day

Daily Nation - vendredi 15 juillet 2011

Nairobi — Mboya Iyadi’s payment number was 211. At 3 pm, he stood patiently, yawning in the queue as he stared at the gathering clouds signalling a huge downpour.

Behind him were dozens of other farmers but in spite of having been there all morning, the queue was growing longer ahead of him.

Farmers keen to leave early know what to do : Surrender Sh100 to the cashier writing the cheque, with which they dash to Webuye.

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On the roadside is an army of boda boda taxi riders who have ferried the farmers to the Butali Outgrowers centre, a kilometre from the factory.

But not all are farmers at this centre. A considerable number are relatives or village shylocks who have turned up to collect longstanding debts from the farmers being paid for their cane after two years of waiting for it to mature for harvest and sale.

"They know that the money won’t last and there won’t be another source. That is why they follow us here," said 45-year-old Iyadi.

Sugarcane is the major cash crop of Kakamega County which hosts three cane companies : Mumias, West Kenya and Butali.

Across the expansive county where cane is cultivated the story is the same on pay day. And given its agricultural potential, Kakamega is probably one of the richest counties in the country.

It is a giant that requires gentle reawakening to unleash its immense potential. Indeed, the county is a lesson in untapped potential in spite of its huge resources in agriculture, especially maize and tea farming, as well as cheap labour.

Ideally, it should be one of Kenya’s bread baskets. Yet Iyadi and his group are a hungry and poor lot.

yment day for farmers who supply cane to the new Malava-based Butali sugar factory.

Their children have dropped out of school and families remain trapped in a vicious spiral of poverty. The hunger is blamed on over reliance on sugarcane, a poor savings culture, alcohol and bad politics.

Many families have dedicated huge chunks of their land to sugarcane, leaving little room for food. They are then forced to incur huge debts to tend the cane, mostly as loans from the sugar factories.

Being their only source of income, they use the crop as collateral to borrow money for school fees, food or medical care.

Offset loans

The result is that once paid, they use the proceeds to offset loans advanced to them by millers or businessmen... and the cycle of deprivation continues.

A crop which could have improved the livelihoods of many farmers has turned into a curse.

"Sugarcane is both a blessing and a curse for us. Sugarcane farming has rendered many families hungry and destitute," reckoned Iyadi, a father of three who has dedicated three of his four acres to cane.

The remainder of the land is under maize, vegetables and napier grass for his three cows. But some farmers have committed all their land to cane.

Iyadi’s is the story of many small scale sugarcane farmers in this region. "The sugarcane earnings cannot last three weeks. We have no maize stocks in our houses and the food prices are very high.

"We don’t save any money because we have to clear our debts," said the farmer who works part-time as photographer to raise cash to feed and clothe his family.

"Some farmers go home without any money after the factories reclaim their loans," he commented.

This has built strong arguments in support of alternative cash crops, inter-cropping and the introduction of fast maturing cane.

is concerned that cane has been a source of pain for many families, especially to women whose husbands flee to Mumias on being paid, then return home after two weeks with a third wife, or empty-handed after squandering the cash on drinking sprees.

"Sugarcane has caused pain to women and children. They say it is a man’s crop and squander all the money in drinking," said.

After picking up his cheque on a Thursday evening, Iyadi rushed to the bank in Webuye, but was unlucky. It had closed for the day.

Savings and investment

Mr K. Theerthamalal, the managing director of West Kenya Sugar and Mr Javantil Patel of Butali, said their firms had come up with programmes to educate farmers on savings and investment.

There was an effort to encourage inter-cropping and to ensure that farmers dedicated at least a third of their farms to food. Mr Theerthamalal acknowledged that a lot of sugar earnings were wasted.

We pump millions of shillings into this economy as earnings from the sugarcane but unfortunately most of cash goes down the drain," he said.

Mr Patel said investors had introduced fast-maturing cane but asked farmers to change their attitudes.

"We are concerned about the plight of our farmers but our hands are tied because we cannot dictate to them how to use their money," he explained.

At Ekero, a bustling business centre less than a kilometre from Mumias Town, noisy, freshly paid farmers washed down kilos of nyama choma with barrels of beer with young women by their side.

One bar owner said the farmers stay around for a week and disappear never to return until the next pay day in another two years.