Journalists can turn the fortunes of the sugar industry

Sugar on display at a Kenyan supermarket. (Photo: Jenipher wachie, Standard)

Domiciled in the lingua of the local media, often in reference to the sugar industry in Kenya, are words like cash-strapped, deathbed, loan-ridden, brink of collapse, corrupt, archaic, sinking, struggling and limping.

While there is some truth to these allegations, they point at an extremely overzealous vanguard that is hell-bent on old and outdated principle of journalism: When a dog bites a man, it is not news but when a man bites a dog, it is news! True.

In an article, Prof Levi Obonyo, the Dean at the School of Communications, Daystar University, once wondered how heavy this diet of negative news is to the extent that we have to be fed on it every day of the week.

Though I hold no brief for Prof Obonyo, certainly, he raises fundamental questions about reporting and whether journalism is simply about acting as a conduit or about sacrifices, however occasionally, to do good to the greater society, have been raised.

It is true that millers in western Kenya are struggling.

No doubt, sustained negative reporting has cultivated fear among the farmers and potential ones, thus changing their focus from cane farming to other less resilient crops in a futile attempt to change their economic health.

I ask; when will the media rise up and set the agenda as well as eliciting debate on the plight of millers away from government grants and corruption?

When will the media rise up to focus on other issues such as irrigation, as a solution to inadequate raw material as a result of overreliance on rainfall, which has become irregular in the last 10 years?

Agricultural knowledge

While a few may be versed in knowledge as far as cane farming is concerned, a number of journalists have not bothered to look at the silver lining in cane farming by trying to familiarize themselves with sugar operations.

Terms such as TCD (Tons of Cane Delivered), TC: TS ratios, nucleus, out growers are alien to most, not all, sugar reporters.

We have also seen reporters who are so quick to rush to write allegations about the millers without confirming such allegations.

Such acts that negate the journalism principles not only affect our operations but also point at the unspoken desire to always fight millers.

The diversification initiatives such as intercropping cane with soya beans by Nzoia Sugar as a revenue stream has been largely ignored.

Recently, for example, the media reported that Nzoia Sugar is on the brink of collapse after the acting MD, Michael Kulundu, told the media that the millers were facing challenges of raw material.

Another reporter also wrote a story claiming that Nzoia Sugar had not paid its farmers since January 2016, yet this was false.

Such acts of negligence contribute to the negative energy that is killing the sugar industry. As it turned out, the reporter believed the story of a trade unionist from a rival company who wanted to fight his competitor through the media.

Sugar millers must have a healthy balance between political acumen and performance in order to see the next day as they manage a larger workforce that is alive to the fact that these millers were started to provide employment to local populace in order to curb migration to urban areas.

The other thing that has consistently been left out is the environment that companies such as Nzoia Sugar, Sony or Chemilil, just to mention a few, operate in.

The mushrooming of new factories owned by private players has posed a lot of challenges to the traditional millers.

In the spirit of competition, it is welcome news to the farmer.

Other challenges such as bureaucracy to change a coma, negates the spirit of fair competition as the traditional millers are heavily regulated, thus making decision making long and time wasting.

The current business environment survives on timely responses.

Media packaging

The media has packaged cane farming as unviable or heavily challenged.

Messages tailored towards encouraging the farmer to diversify farming as well as intercropping as a safeguard to ill economic health in the sugar belt have been ignored at the expense of political expediencies.

Over-reliance on agriculture has also been a key contributor leading to a large number of people dropping out of school to farm instead of acquiring new knowledge to improve the yields of cane.

Lack of laws that guard raw materials and poaching have not made it better for millers.

The man bites the dog principle lies in telling the story of the sugar industry afresh and deliberately to save the millions who depend on these millers.

Local and national journalists must refocus on slanting their coverage on the positive side of cane farming.

The media must refocus its massive influence to save the people in the cane belts, otherwise they will become accomplices in sinking the millers.

It is time the media retold the story of Sugar industry to realise the original dream.

Mr Awino is a Communications expert in the sugar Industry