COST EFFECTIVE ON PRODUCTION OF SUGAR’S SUBSTITUTE

This paper focused to study the cost of cultivation of stevia versus sugarcane to encourage the farmer regarding cultivation of this plant and also provide information regarding profitability of cultivation. Stevia become a potential subsitute for sugar and renewable raw material in the food market because increasing in the number of diabetic and health conscious individual boost up the international market of high quality stevia leaves which is a non-caloric natural sugar. Very little information on the cost of cultivation of stevia specially in Malaysia context cause a lot of uncertainty with regard to cultivation of this plant and also about selection of the profitable propagating material. The present study thus concerned with calculating the cost of cultivation of stevia also calculating the break-even price of both stevia and sugarcane. The result from this study shows, based on the enterprise budget constructed for both crop, the estimated profit of stevia is much higher as compared to the sugarcane cultivation which are RM 46,000 and RM 6,200 respectively. From the breakeven price analysis also showing that stevia will give more profit compared to sugarcane where profit of RM 1.18/kg for stevia and RM 0.15/kg for sugarcane