Urgent action needs to be taken to ensure that Fiji's sugar production increases, mill efficiencies and cane quality drastically improves, and more people get into cane farming.

This is based on the current cane and sugar production when compared to the 1989 to 1993 period.

Discussions will be focused on this at the Food Symposium which is currently underway after statistics were provided to stakeholders by the Ministry of National Planning.

According to the statistics received by Fijivillage, from the years 1989 to 2009, average cane production declined from 3.7 million tonnes to 2.3 million tonnes, which is a decline of 1.4 million tonnes of cane. 

Similarly, average sugar production recorded a decline from 425,000 tonnes to 168,000 tonnes respectively.

This is a rapid decline and the issue needs to be addressed as sugar is one of Fiji's main foreign exchange earners.

The worsening of the productivity level is best illustrated by the ratio of cane needed to produce a tonne of sugar in Fiji, which has increased from an average of 8 to 8 in the year 1989 to 13 to 4 in the year 2009.

The expiry of cane land leases since 1997 resulted in the loss of confidence in cane farming by growers and led to the migration of cane farmers.

The growers starting leaving the farms due to non renewal of ALTA and several evictions that took place from 1997.

The average number of cane growers declined from 22,874 in the year 1989 to 13,911 growers last year. Cane area harvested fell in the same period from 72, 000 hectares to 50, 000 hectares.

On to sugar exports which Fiji still heavily relies on.

Sugar exports have generally been on a downward spiral since 1989.

In 1996, sugar export reached it's peak when FSC exported 500,000 tonnes to the EU earning a total of around 302 million dollars.

Last year, sugar export stood at around 153,000 tonnes with earnings of 155 million dollars.

The declining trend has been attributed to low domestic production, unstable international sugar markets, and the impact of the 36 percent reduction in the EU sugar price since 2007.

Prior to the 36 percent in EU price reduction, the price of sugar exported to the EU market stood at One thousand 174 dollars a tonne.

Now the price stands at about 745 dollars a tonne.

While speaking at the Food Symposium at Novotel Lami earlier today, Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama said action needs to be taken and one of the most important issues is the availability of land.

Commodore Bainimarama said the government is now looking at commercialised farming and more land is expected to be available later this year.