Burning the Cane Fields

Before the farms harvest the sugar cane, it's burned to remove wide grass blades, or trash from the cane, leaving the bamboo like cane behind. This saves a lot of work for the cane cutter, and clears the area of snakes and rodents.

South Coast Sugar

A worker climbs between two sugar cane haulers.

This week I had the pleasure of touring the Rhodes sugar cane farm on KwaZulu-Natal's South Coast. The owner, Craig Rhodes, and his father Chris were kind enough to let me have the run of the place for two days. It's a large operation, with over 300 workers, mostly Xhosa speaking Pondo's from the Eastern Cape, and stretches for more than 25 km's across the rolling hills.


Loading cane onto trucks for the trip to the nearby Sezela Mill




A tractor is pulled out of a flooded access road


Craig Rhodes checks the oil on an ailing tractor.








Sugar cane cutters at work. Cane is burned, and then harvested by hand.




Craig Rhodes confers with his foreman.


A cane cutter at the end of the day.