The Hon. Prime Minister and Minister for Sugar, Voreqe Bainimarama will launch the Sugar Cane Industry WebGIS Portal on Thursday this week at the Sugarcane Growers Building Hall in Lautoka.
The Sugar Industry, since 2011 through the assistance of the Wallon Region of Belgium had embarked on a GIS project to digitise Fiji’s sugar cane farms in order to provide a decision making tool to be used by the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC), Government and the sugar industry.
This pilot project, since its inception in 2011, cost around $1.5 million and was funded on a 60:40 (Wallon Region, Belgium: Sugarcane Industry) cost sharing arrangement which will come to an end on December 31 this year after which the sugarcane industry will complete the project from its own resources.
The digitisation of cane farms and the capturing of all data in the WebGIS portal will enable access to the following features:
- geographical location of cane farm;
- cane access road used by each cane farm;
- mill location;
- cane variety and age;
- area under cane;
- area under other agriculture;
- area under fallow;
- during crush can view live crushing plot and tonnage extracted from that plot.
This WebGIS Project will enable the FSC and sugar industry to view and analyse the performance of individual growers, sectors and sugar mills.
Apart from Australia and New Zealand, no other country in the South Pacific has conducted a detailed survey of this type.
In Fiji, it is the first such project to demarcate cane areas, classify cane varieties and age and during crush can provide live crushing plot with colour coding to reflect tonnage harvested.
This GIS project provides great value to the FSC, sugar industry and government in terms of providing accurate cane and sugar production estimates as compared to previously.
On the basis of the statistics tab available on the GIS Portal, it will enable users to evaluate and analyse the performance of the growers, the sectors and the sugar mills.