How briefcase farmers connive with factory insiders to become millionaires

The emergence of briefcase farmers in the sugar belt has complicated the efforts to revive the sector, a Nation survey has found out.

In perhaps one of the best-kept secrets in the sugar industry, these farmers collude with insiders to have cane assigned to their delivery numbers, even when they have delivered nothing. Yet remarkably, they constitute the largest number of farmers on paper.

With most of the mills having manual systems that require frequent human intervention, many are said to have made fortunes by simply slashing small proportions of what the genuine farmers deliver to the millers and creating a farming empire to earn millions during payment.

This is one of the most exploited avenues for reaping from what genuine farmers deliver to the factory.

These briefcase farmers work with factory staff or proxies in the factory. Sometimes staff collude with the farmers to exaggerate the weight of the cane delivered and divide the spoils during payment.

PLOT NUMBER

So rampant is the practice that some employees in Muhoroni are said to have been selling cane from the factory’s own nucleus farms.

All one needs is to have one plot and deliver cane using that plot number, which then becomes the gateway for all other payments.

In the scheme, one farmer can end up with their cane being harvested three times a year from the same crop, with better yields than what is achieved in Brazil on an identical plot under irrigation.

A heavily-guarded internal audit of the miller in June this year is said to contain the ugly details of this fraud, and many others, where systems have been tampered with and computer farmers enriched.

Muhoroni Sugar Company Receiver-Manager Francis Ooko was non-committal when we visited the miller. “To some extent, some of these (underhand deals) are true and some are not true,” he said.

The audit also revealed (according to those who have read it) the details of political leaders registered as farmers, and who receive consistent kickbacks.

Apart from collaborating with insiders, the briefcase farmers are said to add shrubs, sticks and stones to their cane to increase its weight. With weak inspection, which relies on a straight prod through a huge stack of cane on a trailer, it is difficult to detect the objects.

FOREIGN OBJECTS

And yet some breakdowns of the mills’ machines are said to be partly attributable to these foreign objects.

Another trick farmers use to prompt the factory to harvest cane is burning the plantation. This is done in collaboration with contracted cane cutters who, when they need work, create “mystery fires”, especially during the dry January season, when they also need money.

The series of fires disrupt factory planning to the extent that it is forced to accept cane it cannot crush. As the cane awaits crushing, its quality deteriorates, and since the farmers are paid according to the recorded weight of cane when it is delivered, the miller bears the loss.

The contracted harvesters even burn the factory’s nucleus cane to create jobs when they are idle.

“Frustrated farmers often do that when there is no response and they want their cane harvested. Once it is documented as an accident, the factory is forced to redirect its harvesting machinery to your farm.

The risky part is that you might suffer some loss if the fire gets to immature cane, or if the affected area is expansive and harvesting delays,” a farmer in Oseng’ near Chemelil, who requested anonymity, told the Nation.

CAUSED PANIC

There was panic among the briefcase farmers when the government recently announced that it would draw up a list of the farmers in a bid to avoid a repeat of the National Cereals and Produce Board scam, where briefcase farmers were paid before the genuine ones.

The Nation found such a notice sent out by Muhoroni Sugar Company on October 25: “Following the government’s decision to pay farmers across the country, we are compiling a detailed list of the same. We, therefore, request all farmers to submit all their personal details and bank details by the end of today.”

A similar notice was sent out asking farmers to send their full details to facilitate the payment of arrears directly into their account.

The move caused panic, with public millers and co-operatives — which are owed by the farmers — fearing they would not get their money.

But the briefcase farmers had reason to worry since their operations would be disrupted.

Just how long this scheme has been going on and the damage it has done to the industry is unknown because it is perpetrated by insiders.