A sugar farmer's story

David Dlamini has become so disillusioned with the sugar trade that he has given up farming. [Simon Rawles]

David Dlamini has been growing sugar cane in South Africa for 27 years. But the 66-year-old was forced to give up farming last year because he could no longer make ends meet

His sugar cane stands rotting in the fields north of Durban because he can’t afford to harvest it.

“It wasn’t worth farming any more” says the father of seven.

“You worked for months and when you looked at your expense, you found you never covered your costs”.

Although David’s farm lies thousands of miles from Europe, decisions made by the European Union have a direct impact on his livelihood.

In 1975 when David first started farming, Europe imported most of its sugar. But today, because of subsidies, Europe is the world’s second largest sugar exporter – producing more than 20 million tonnes of sugar every year and dumping around 5 million tonnes on the world market.

The South African Sugar Association estimates that over the past decade the EU has depressed the world sugar price by 20 to 40 per cent, forcing small-scale farmers like David out of business.

“The price of sugar fluctuates all the time,” he says. “When it declines, it affects the farmer directly. If we got a higher price for sugar, it would help us a lot”.

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