Agriculture minister John Steenhuisen believes South Africa’s sugar industry should diversify into other crops, and mass produce crops used in ethanol production.
In an interview with Business Day to mark his first 100 days in office, Steenhuisen said diversification could resolve the dispute around the sugar tax – a tax on the sugar content in drinks which the sugar industry says threatens thousands of jobs.
“There’s a global demand for corn, wheat … and sorghum.
“What we need is an agreement with the energy department and buy in from stakeholders. If we get that, it will solve the sugar tax concern in South Africa and help [mass produce] crops into those used for ethanol production,” Steenhuisen said.
“We could go some way to replacing our reliance on crude oil, through biofuels. Sorghum is also a biofuel, and we have local knowledge on how to produce it here in South Africa,” he told the newspaper.
Steenhuisen also has big plans to better exploit South Africa’s good standing in the BRICS group of countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates.
“Europe is our largest market but looking at existing trade agreements, we need to find ways to deepen and widen them. We need to expand our citrus and beef export potential, and why is China buying so much of its wine from Australia and France?
“We should be exporting apples to India and in the Middle East there is huge demand for SA’s agricultural products — lamb alone is massive,” Steenhuisen said.
