Around 1.7 million tons of sugar are estimated to be produced in the current Iranian year (started March 21) to register a 6% increase compared with last year, the executive of the Sugarbeet and Sugar Project with the Ministry of Agriculture announced.
“This autumn, close to 17,000 hectares of farmland will go under sugarbeet cultivation. So far, sugarbeet has been planted aon over 14,000 hectares of land in 12 provinces. We predict the harvest of more than 7 million tons of the crop this year to register a 16.6% increase compared with last year,” Alireza Yazdani was also quoted as saying by Mehr News Agency.
A ceremony was held at the headquarters of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture in Tehran on July 30 to celebrate the record high production of sugar in the last Iranian year (March 2016-17), which reached 1.65 million tons.
According to ICCIMA, as reported by its news portal Otaghiranonline.ir, this amount of sugar production is unprecedented in the past 120 years.
Bahman Danaei, secretary of Iran Guild Union for Sugar and Sugar Cube Factories, said the record production indicates Iran is able to meet 75% of its demand for sugar through domestic production.
Iranians consume between 2.2 and 2.4 million tons of sugar a year and last year, an import of over 550,000 tons of the product was needed.
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