Fiji, November 13, 2014: Fiji’s Prime Minister and Minister for Sugar, Voreqe Bainimarama, has launched a WebGIS portal for the sugarcane industry in Lautoka.
The digitisation of sugarcane farms and the capturing of all data in the WebGIS portal will enable access a number of features including geographical location of cane farm, cane access road used by each cane farm and area under cane. The project will enable the Fiji Sugar Corporation and sugar industry to view and analyse the performance of individual growers, sectors and sugar mills.
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, 2014, after which the sugarcane industry will complete the project from its own resources.
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. Apart from Australia and New Zealand, Fiji is the only country in the region to have conducted a detailed survey of this nature.
The project is expected to provide great value to the FSC, sugar industry and government in terms of providing accurate cane and sugar production estimates. 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.
Source: Fiji Government portal
