Sugar Enquiry ends with farmers complaining about price

SILOAH, St Elizabeth

The Sugar Industry Enquiry ended on Monday with cane farmers voicing their dissatisfaction with the price sugar manufactures pay them for their crop.

"In this area (St Elizabeth) we are not getting the returns that we should be getting when we take into consideration the cost that we have pay to produce our canes," Herbert Baker, the chairman of the St Elizabeth Canefarmers Association, told the commission.

He noted that in recent years there have been significant cost increases associated with the cultivation of the crop but pointed out that there has only been a marginal increase in the price paid to the farmers for their crop.

"Something has to be done about the price," Baker argued. "The price is just not right. We use our best methods to produce the crop and when we sell it we don't get back the money that we spend. All the inputs have gone up; Fertilisers more than 200 per cent; weedicides too, but the price of the sugar cane has not gone up in that proportion, so something has to be done about the mechanism that is being used to price the sugar cane."

Baker, who has been growing sugar cane for almost two decades, pointed out that "lack of returns" on the crop has contributed to the steady decline in cane production in St Elizabeth over the years.

"A couple years ago, farmers supplied up to 111,000 tonnes of cane to the Appleton factory in the parish, but because of the cost of production it is very hard now to find the farmers producing more than 50,000 tonnes of cane because of the high production costs," he told the commission.

He expressed confidence that if the price being paid for the crop was adjusted upwards production would increase.

"The lands that were once in cane production are still there idle and farmers are willing to cultivate them if the conditions become more favourable," he argued.

Farmers at the hearing also highlighted the need for financing to cultivate the crop and the availability of farm equipment.

At the close of the hearing at Siloah Primary School in St Elizabeth, commission chairman Professor Alvin Wint promised to have the first draft of the commission's recommendations ready within two weeks.

"The enquiry has gone very well. We have had four weeks of meetings at Bernard Lodge (St Catherine) where we had 60 individuals from 35 different organisations present at the enquiry. In addition, we have had two meetings with cane farmers," Wint told the Business Observer.

Other members of the three-member commission are Marjarorie Henriques, a former director of planning at the Institute of Jamaica and Wilfred Baghaloo, a director at the auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

The $15-million enquiry is mandated to review and make recommendations on changes, if any, to the regulatory, institutional and pricing arrangements in the sugar sector.

Professor Wint told the Business Observer that the commission heard major presentations from the All Island Jamaica Canefarmers Association; the National Environment and Planning Agency; Sugar Manufacturers Association of Jamaica; the Rural Agricultural Development Agency; Jamaica Customs; Ministry of Investment, Trade and Commerce; the Planning Institute of Jamaica; and Aubyn Hill, the chief executive officer of the Sugar Company of Jamaica Holdings Limited.

In addition to concerns about production costs, the commission heard suggestions on how to improve efficiency, both at the farm and factory levels, in an effort to enhance viability.

Among the other issues examined were:

* how to deal with the import regime for refined sugar;

* how to streamline the operations of the support services, such as the Sugar Industry Authority and the Sugar Research Institute of Jamaica as well as Jamaica Cane Products Sales;

* how to effectively market the sugar produced in the island; and

* matters pertaining to diversification into ethanol production and co-generation, and what kind of policy regime would be required to support that diversification.

source: farmersguardian