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Cane fields on the Ubombo sugar estate in Eswatini
ABF Sugar attributes part of its business success to productive, high-yielding and robust agricultural practices at its own sugar estates and those of its third-party growers. The production of sugar beet and sugar cane faces potential challenges due to changing weather patterns, loss of biodiversity, land degradation and water scarcity. These conditions can lead to more volatile crop yields, further exacerbated by rising pest and plant disease pressures, as well as the reduced availability of active plant protection products due to stricter regulatory controls.
To gain deeper insights into our nature-related dependencies, impacts, opportunities and risks, ABF Sugar has partnered with Risilience Limited, a sustainability intelligence company, to comprehensively assess its material nature-related dependencies, impacts, opportunities and risks. The insights gained from this project will inform ABF Sugar’s strategic direction over the next five years, enabling the division to make more informed decisions on future agricultural strategies that integrate both nature dependencies and climate impacts.
In 2024, ABF Sugar businesses faced significant challenges due to extreme weather events, including heatwaves, droughts and floods, which had a substantial impact on its agricultural and farming practices. These experiences have driven the development of innovative approaches to strengthen resilience and create new opportunities for the future.
ABF Sugar is an active member of the Sustainable Agricultural Initiative (SAI), the global food and drink industry platform that aims to develop more sustainable agriculture solutions. It is also a founding member of SAI's Regenerative Agriculture Platform.
Growers for Azucarera in Spain and British Sugar in the UK, as well as our own estates in Africa, are using the SAI Platform Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) 3.0 tool to drive continuous improvement on-farm. The tool assesses operations and benchmarks them against standards already being used in the field, such as Red Tractor Crops and Sugar Beet Standards in the UK or SUSFARMS (susfarms - SASRI) in South Africa.
ABF Sugar has achieved FSA Silver Level equivalence across all its businesses’ own operations, and grower operations in Nchalo and Dwangwa in Malawi. One key co-operative, Phata in Malawi, which supplies the Nchalo estate, was awarded by the SAI Platform the FSA Growing a Better Planet Award in 2023. In South Africa, Illovo Sugar South Africa has achieved Proterra Certification for selected farms, Sezela Sugar Mill and Sezela downstream products factories. Also, Azucarera is currently updating its farm sustainability assessments in alignment with the FSA 3.0 tool. This process of assessing, improving and validating on-farm sustainability using SAI’s FSA tools will guide farmers towards more sustainable practices and enable ABF Sugar to measure and demonstrate its collective progress toward its GHG emissions reduction targets.
ABF Sugar businesses co-fund research institutions with our growers, including:
These engagements aim to enhance crop resilience and productivity while reducing negative environmental impacts. This is achieved by partnering with SASRI in South Africa to trial new sugar cane varieties and working with the BBRO in the UK to test different approaches to monitoring emissions from sugar beet cultivation. The collaboration with AIMCRA in Spain strengthens the links between individual farmers and field technicians to provide better guidance on crop management.
ABF Sugar is also promoting biodiversity and ecosystem health across its operations and supply chains through various initiatives. These include the creation of beetle banks and refuge areas, the use of cover crops, and tree planting at all sites. In Zambia, at its Nakambala site, a key initiative is focused on ecosystem and biodiversity restoration through tree planting, with the goal of planting 1,000 trees monthly, starting from July 2024, with an aim to combat climate change and promote biodiversity. In addition, Illovo Sugar Malawi established protected areas on both the Dwangwa and Nchalo estates, which are home to diverse plant and animal life.
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One of our Azucarera employees examining a sugar beet with a farmer on his farm, Spain
In recent years, the sugar beet industry has been significantly impacted by Virus Yellows disease, which is transmitted by aphids and reduces the yield and sugar content of each plant. Research into integrated pest management and more sustainable solutions for controlling Virus Yellows has become a priority for ABF Sugar’s UK and Spanish businesses.
British Sugar is investigating innovative grower practices that can affect the aphids’ ability to detect sugar beet crops. This includes exploring the use of natural soil colourings or inter-row crops to camouflage the sugar beets, as well as using odours like onion, peppermint, and garlic to distract the aphids from identifying the crop.
British Sugar has also invested in a collaborative project with agriculture biotechnology company Tropic to explore how gene editing (GE) can be used to specifically target the yellowing viruses.
This collaboration makes use of Tropic’s GE induced Gene Silencing (GEiGS®) technology platform to make minimal and precise gene edits in sugar beet enabling the crop to resist infection. The initial stages of the project, including mapping the sugar beet genome sequence and computational designs for gene editing, have been completed.
The project is expected to continue through to 2026, and it may take at least another five years before the Virus Yellow-resistant sugar beet seed is commercially available. In 2024, the project received a boost with a £660,000 grant from Innovate UK's Farming Futures R&D Fund, jointly awarded to British Sugar, Tropic and The John Innes Centre. The British Beet Research Organisation (BBRO) is also supporting the project.
In Spain, research projects have focused on understanding the disease's low polarisation and providing specific support for fighting Virus Yellows. This is done in coordination with national and regional governments, focusing on recommendations for improved seed varieties and coordinating trials on other diseases. AIMCRA remains the technical expert for Azucarera’s beet crop management, providing timely information on the plant's evolution through their online and offline channels.
Sugar cane growers at Illovo Sugar South Africa's 2024 growers' day in Sezela, South Africa
Our sugar businesses in Africa are building stronger relationships with the communities surrounding their factories through a mutually beneficial community bean planting programme. This initiative, in place at the Sezela, Glenroy, Esperanza and Isonti farms, allows approximately 150 community members to use the fields between sugar cane harvests to plant their own beans. This provides a food source to sustain their families and helps them earn an income.
The programme runs when the sugar cane harvest is complete, typically between February and May. Beans are a cover crop that benefits the land by increasing soil organic matter, controlling pests and fixing nitrogen. Sugar cane and soybeans complement each other in pest control, disrupting pest cycles and reducing overall pest populations by decreasing the concentration of host plants. The businesses benefit from the leftover soybean residue, which decomposes and acts as a natural fertiliser for the next sugar cane season. Intercropping with soybeans also improves crop development.
Soil samples being collected at the Nakambala estate, Zambia
In collaboration with experts from the University of Cape Town, our sugar businesses in Africa are conducting research on soil biodiversity in order to improve sugar cane yields in its southern African supply chains and establish more sustainable agricultural practices.
The project aims to educate the local teams about the benefits of increased soil biodiversity and to develop protocols for on-farm teams to monitor soil biodiversity over time as more regenerative practices are adopted and modified according to local conditions.
Soil biodiversity plays a crucial role in agroecosystems, particularly in litter decomposition, nutrient cycling, and pest regulation. Initially, the project will employ a range of tools, including taxonomic, molecular, ecological and stable isotope tools, to assess soil biodiversity in sugar cane fields subject to different management, such as conventional versus regenerative agriculture, and green cane harvesting.
The primary objective is to evaluate soil fauna density and diversity in fields under various management, ultimately contributing to the development of a rapid assessment for long-term monitoring of soil biological quality in sugar cane fields. Additionally, the project aims to study soil food webs under different sugar cane management practices, shedding light on the diversity of decomposers and predator-prey relationships in soil under sugar cane cultivation and guiding efforts to promote natural predators.
Overall, this project will contribute to deepening ABF Sugar’s understanding of the composition and resilience of soil biodiversity in sugar cane cropping systems while providing insights into how to improve soil biological quality. By 2023/24, the had project collected nearly 1,000 samples from sugar cane fields at Nakambala in Zambia, Nchalo in Malawi and Ubombo in Eswatini.
Looking ahead, our sugar businesses in Africa will adopt the protocols recommended by this research to measure soil health in their fields with the aim of encouraging and accelerating the adoption of these practices across their operations.
Robotti sugar beet seed planting demonstration in Cambridgeshire, UK
British Sugar is testing the use of autonomous robots to improve sugar beet cultivation. In partnership with Sentry and Autonomous Agri Solutions, the Robotti robot is being deployed for planting and weeding crops. The goal is to reduce reliance on chemical treatments, increase yield and enhance quality. The overall objective of the trial is to evaluate the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of robotic farming for sugar beet production.
Key improvements being tested through the trial this year includes:
A sugar beet grower with one of the agricultural account managers from British Sugar
Working with over 150 industry partners, British Sugar’s in-house growing team supports knowledge exchange among its agriculture colleagues, evaluates growing techniques, supports contractors, and provides a platform to encourage farmers to grow sugar beet in the region.
The team is focused on three areas that could help to reduce Scope 1 GHG emissions on-farm: protecting soils, improving biodiversity and reducing artificial inputs. With several field-scale experiments underway to monitor impacts, the overall aim is to measure emissions from the growth and production of sugar beet to establish a baseline to further reduce emissions. The team is celebrating its 15th year of operation and continues to make progress.
Harvesting of sugar cane at the Nakambala Estate in Zambia
The Nakambala sugar cane estate in Zambia has implemented a new farming system to improve resource stewardship, yields and agricultural profitability.
Following early analysis of the data gathered, results show that the system has led to significant improvements in yield, with an increase of 20 tonnes per hectare compared to the previous growing cycle.
The key components of the system include an innovative replanting schedule, minimal tillage, upgraded drainage and irrigation systems to develop more efficient water distribution to the crops, precise application of fertilizers, the use of green-cover manures, and GPS-assisted vehicles for efficient soil preservation and fuel savings. This reduction in replanting leads to substantial cost savings, while the minimised soil disturbance helps protect natural resources such as soil and water.
Our sugar businesses in Africa will be extending the programme to more hectares at Nakambala in Zambia and piloting in Ubombo in Eswatini, Nchalo and Dwangwa in Malawi.
One of our Azucarera employees demonstrating the Visor crop monitoring platform to a sugar beet farmer on his farm, Spain
Since 2018, Azucarera has been implementing precision agriculture projects, focusing on expanding its control over the entire process of the crop production. This includes extensive data collection on soil conditions, setting potential yields and using advanced simulators.
The current focus of this approach is to improve the continuous digital measurement of polarisation, nitrogen and other testing devices to monitor the condition of the sugar beets in the field and during their delivery to the factory. By employing an artificial intelligence system that integrates satellite data with information on climate, soil, sugar beet samples and more, Azucarera is able to assess the crop's health, nitrogen and irrigation requirements, and sucrose levels. This enables the identification of the optimal time for harvesting.
