THE Lowveld's current dam water holdings are sufficient to irrigate
This comes as
Lowveld falls under the Runde catchment area in the south eastern semi-arid to arid region of
According to
This will therefore be an impetus for improved sugarcane production in the country for coming seasons.
In its first quarter trading ending
"And due to the long cropping cycle of sugarcane, current cane expansion and yield improvement initiatives will impact production in the future seasons.
In the quarter ending
Private farmers' harvested cane production grew significantly to 270, 024 tons registering a 94 percent jump in the positive from 139, 297 tons in the relative period last year
A yield of 3,5 million metric tonnes is anticipated in the 2020/21 marketing year having benefited from decent weather conditions, availability of sufficient irrigation water, and an increase in area planted
According to Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN), the sector forecasts sugarcane production in
Generally, sugarcane hectarage in the lowveld has been on the growth path since the 2017/18 season where a total hectarage of 45 245 hectares was put under the crop.
A modest increase in hectarage was achieved in the two previous growing seasons as 48 937 and 53 000 hectares of the crop were cultivated in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 farming seasons respectively. Resultantly, Zimbabwean sugar imports have been on the decline for the past three seasons credited mainly to the adequate raw sugar supply in the domestic market.
About 80 percent of
Private farmers, including large scale farmers and small scale farmers, produce the remaining 20 percent of the country's sugar cane crop.
Sugar cane in
The main export destinations for
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