From Africa to Brussel - By Jay Kay

So while my daughter was enjoying the East African sunshine and sipping cold drinks on the terrace I was wandering the grey streets of Brussels, visiting the sugar deciders at the European Commission. The EU is one of the few regions that have actually run out of sugar during this bull market. Shelves were empty of sugar before Christmas in Portugal and more recently in Poland and Germany. The only other countries that ran out of sugar that we know about were Pakistan and Bolivia, not the most well run of countries. 

So I went to Brussels to try and explain that there was a continuing risk of shortages in Europe and that buyers were still having difficulty in finding supplies. I came out alive - they didn't shoot the messenger, but I was perhaps a little too frank. 

The EU is now dependent on sugar imports from countries like Tanzania and it is encouraging to see estates as well run as the one that Charlotte visited. The world needs more food -including sugar - and Africa is one continent with the potential to supply it. There is no reason why the continent should need to import 5  million tonnes of sugar each year and I look forward to seeing the continent become a net food exporter over the next decades.

TPC Part 2 (photos), Tanzania

If you look at the photo from the Indian mill with the bullocks transporting cane, this is the equivalent at TPC where cane is cut and directly put onto wagons which are taken to the mill for crushing in a minimum of time.

TCP, Northern Tanzania

As far as my experience of sugar mills goes, these are hot, dusty places with a strong smell of molasses. When the machinery is on, you can hardly hear yourself speaking, and in any case you’re better off closing your mouth otherwise fibres of bagasse will fly right in.

The TPC mill in North Tanzania, on the other hand, does not look like a mill at all. It looks like a golf course, and a tennis course, a five star resort in other words, surrounded with 8,000 hectares of sugar cane fields irrigated by sprinklers.

That’s because TPC is designed so that nobody needs, or wants, to leave the estate.

When you drive the 5 km separating you from the main road to the mill itself, driving through the cane fields, you’ll see various indications “TPC hospital”, “TPC school” etc. There are also many types of pretty houses where the staff, from cane cutters to directors, live. Probably better than any other small Tanzanian town, they have their own infrastructure, including their own police.

The mill, in reality, is the last thing you see. You are first drawn towards an open single-floored house which faces on to a wide stretch of beautiful green lawn. Yes, the restaurant/bar gives onto the golf club.

To make things even more interesting, the golf club was, at that moment, only occupied with young local boys. “We run several NGOs, TPC management tells us, and one of them sponsors these boys to become professional golf players”. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the next Tiger Woods came from a Tanzanian sugar estate?

We have to be dragged away from the golf course to meet a charming white South African who will take us for a tour of the mill.

The rainy season has just started and the mill stopped crushing a few days prior, he tells us, disappointed for us. In reality, we didn’t mind, it meant that for once we could hear all the explanations.

A part of the mill was brand new with machinery imported from India. Every minute the mill is not crushing represents an $8,000 loss, and we were told of an incident when a simple switched that had been pushed by accident by one of the engineers have caused the mill to halt for 12 hours. They had a huge fight after as to who would be the one explaining what happened to the top management.

We spent the rest of the day going round, admiring the estate. “I don’t even bother going into town anymore, someone from Logistics told us, the bar is subsidised, they have delicious pork ribs and swimming pools. What else could I possibly want?”

After the morning mill visit, we spent the afternoon eating fries on the restaurant terrace, trying to spot the world’s next golf genius.

Western Uttar Pradesh Part 2 (photos), India

It really makes you wonder why Indians refer to cane as 'the lazy man's crop"

Western Uttar Pradesh, India

When you live in North India, you hear as much about Uttar Pradesh (UP) and its political tribulations as you meet people from there who have settled in the capital.

UP is also India’s biggest sugar producer and therefore a visit to at least one of the state’s mills imposed itself as a must. But because the state is huge, we decided we would go to a mill ‘neighbouring’ Delhi, or some 4-5 hours journey away, near Muzzafarnagar.

We went in late January, when the winter is slowly giving place to the hot burning sun. Thus, although we started the day covered in shawls and jumpers, we quickly settled for a simple shirt as we made our way through the sunny day.

The most surprising thing was the impeccable conditions of the roads which made the long drive that much more pleasant even though in India, the saying goes that new roads are as quickly destroyed by the inhospitable weather as old roads take time to be rebuilt.



Our first stop was at a cane dropping point, were farmers, once summoned by the local mill, come to drop a pre-determined quantity of their cane that mill trucks will in turn bring to the factory. This system, in theory, reduces the loss of the sugar caused by long bullock-cart journeys from the field to the mill. In reality, however, the cane often remains several hours at the drop off/pick up point before being taken in the truck.




We then decided to visit our friends the gurwale (gur makers) and made a stop at a gur making installation temporarily settled between the side of the road and the far-reaching cane fields. The hot sun combined with the fumes coming out from the precarious machinery created a slightly suffocating atmosphere.

The whole machinery was made to function on the engine of a single tractor. Cane was introduced at one end, and after several crushing processes the juice was extracted and poured into a cement basin where it was boiled and purified in 4 stages.

We tasted the juice and despite the suspicious colour, it turned out to be very good. Although I couldn’t quite manage to finish my glass to the disappointment of our gur making friends.

 
The visit to the gur mandi (market) was interesting although pretty much nothing was going on. It was full of a various of types of gur (powdered, layered, yellow, white etc) for as many purposes (sweetener, food, alcohol, animal feed). We were very quickly circled by every member of the market as we discussed with them what was going on. They were complaining that they were struggling to sell their products.

We ended at the day at one major mill in the area. The manager, a very friendly and technology savvy sikh (he was juggling between his Blackberry, his Iphone, his Ipad and his Galaxy Tab) took us around the mill. The crushing has only just started to pick up, he told, as he explained the different purposes of the machinery.

At the entrance of the mill, bullock carts drop off the cane. The cane is then taken through a multitude of steps until it is turned into different kinds of sugar.

It is a common sight to see children grabbing some of the cane of the carts.

I have to say that the most amazing thing was that absolutely nothing goes to waste. They produce ethanol, local alcohol, whiskey, co-generation etc. And that’s on top of the many different types of sugar that comes out of these walls. When I mentionned I suffered from iron deficiency, our friend gave me a bag of brown sugar with iron!