South African Sucrose Quality in Sugar: Determinants and its Empirical Implications

Mishelle Doorasamy,Bruce Rhodes

doi:10.22610/jebs.v9i5(j).1913

Abstract

The study investigates which factors determine sucrose quality in the South African sugar cane production process. Though South Africa is the 8th largest producer of sugar cane in the world and the highest in Africa, a decline has been observed in the production of high quality sugar in the country. The study adopts the Auto Regressive Distributive Lags (ARDL) technique to analyze sugar cane production time series data from 1980 to 2016 in South Africa. Ten variables were tested, including Average Temperature, Stalk growth, Evaporation, and Soil Water Content (100mm). Our findings revealed that on both the short and long run, some of the variables investigated have the tendency of increasing sucrose level in sugar cane while an increase in other variables would decrease sucrose level altogether. However, the impact of Soil Water Content (100mm) appears not to be statistically significant on sucrose production in our regression model in the short and long run. Of special interest are Stalk growth (Reference sugar cane) and average temperature, as their values are more significantly germane as regards the quantity of sucrose obtained during sugar cane processing in South Africa.

Highlights

The South African sugarcane industry is a diverse one involving both the agricultural cultivation processes, as well as the industrial production of sugars, syrups, and a range of by-products
Justification of Estimating Techniques: The estimating technique employed for this research work is the time series Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach of Chudik and Pesaran (2013), with the aim of testing for the existence of long and short run relationships between sucrose content in sugar cane and the variables that determine it
Data Analysis and Interpretation: We report the results of the investigation carried out on the determinants of Average temperature (Avtm), Drainage at 60mm (Drn60), Ecref, Fao, growth - reference sugar cane (Grow), Harvestable days – mechanically (Harvest), Rain, Sr100, Soil Water Content - 100 mm (Swc100) and Thermal time 16°C (TT16), which are the independent variables

Summary

Introduction

The South African sugarcane industry is a diverse one involving both the agricultural cultivation processes, as well as the industrial production of sugars, syrups, and a range of by-products. It is a significant part of the country’s agricultural economy with an average sugar output of 2.2 million tons per season (second only to maize), and is mostly centred in KwaZulu-Natal. A total land mass of 430 000 hectares is engaged for the cultivation of Sugar cane in South Africa, covering about fourteen major provinces bordered by the Northern Pongola in the North and the Mpumalanga Low veld in the South. The largely irrigated Northern Pongola and Mpumalanga Low veld areas makes up the remaining part of the total land area utilised for the growing of sugar cane in South Africa (Anon, 2016)

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Conclusion