The State has now set the national average price of sugarcane delivered to millers at Sh5,000 per tonne for August, walking back on an earlier chopped rate of Sh4,950 and hoping to tame disquiet among farmers.
The new pay rate is however still lower than the Sh5,125 that farmers earned for a tonne of sugarcane supplied in June and remains the lowest since the start of the year. In February a tonne of sugarcane was priced at Sh6,100 which means that the cost of the raw material has fallen by 18.03 percent over the six months to August.
