THE island's sugar cane industry has undergone resurgence in the past year, with a big increase in the number of registered farmers and record prices being paid for sugar.
Some 1,000 new cane farmers were registered this year bringing the number of registered cane farmers to 9,000.
Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Hon. Roger Clarke, says despite the expected downturn in the sugar industry, due to the passage of Hurricane Sandy, stakeholders must rely less on importation and increase production as a means of saving the sector.
“We ought to be thinking about producing sugar for the export market, and to satisfying local demand.
General Manager of Jamaica Cane Products Sales (JCPS), Karl James, is raising questions about whether Jamaica could have received greater value from the 2010 divestment of sugar estates to the Chinese firm Complant.
According to James, the country could have seen greater rewards from the sale if the divestment team had sought the advice of local experts.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is pushing to expand the local sugar industry and bring back some 20,000 hectares of land into sugar cane production, over the next four years.
Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Hon. Roger Clarke, made the announcement at a seminar on: ‘Revolutionising the Sugar Cane Industry through Drip Irrigation’, held in Kendal, Manchester, on July 26. The seminar was hosted by Jamaica Drip Irrigation.
Despite the divestment of loss-making sugar assets, which wrapped up last year, Jamaica will still be investing big in sugar this year, but more than half the funds are headed into housing for former workers being relocated from privatised estates. Under the heading of “agro industries,” the Ministry of Agriculture has tapped JA$1.896 billion to be spent on sugar, all but JA$96 million of which will be distributed through the Sugar Transformation Unit.
A total of $1.9 billion was allocated to the sugar industry for this sector in the 2012/13 Estimates of Expenditure, currently before the House of Representatives.
Of the sum, $1.8 billion will go towards carrying out the activities of the Sugar Transformation Unit, which include compensation of employees, grants and contributions, and rental of property, machinery and equipment; while the remaining $96 million will be used for the repair of sugar cane roads.
The National Environment and Planning Agency has issued an ultimatum to the sugar industry to stop burning sugar cane by 2014, but sugar interests say if they accede it will wind up costing them more to farm cane.
In a letter dated March 14, 2012 to the Sugar Industry Authority, head of NEPA, Peter Knight told the sector it had two years to end the traditional practice of burning cane during reaping.
Jamaica has, for nearly six years, sat on a US$100-million ($8.6 billion) credit line aimed at boosting the domestic sugar industry without using any of the funds made available by the Brazilian government.
Brazil’s ambassador to Jamaica, Antonio F Da Costa e Silva Neto, yesterday said that no projects have been proposed to date.
PAN CARIBBEAN Sugar Company (PCSC) Limited is now at odds with the Sugar Industry Authority (SIA) over the pooling arrangement for a three-year supply deal between British sugar refiner Tate and Lyle and Jamaica Cane Product Sales (JCPS).
PCSC, the operators of Frome and Monymusk sugar factories, has refused to be part of the current pooling system beyond the 2011-2012 crop year, and has reportedly resigned from the Sugar Manufacturers' Corporation of Jamaica Limited.
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Thursday August 18, 2011 – Government has completed privatisation of the island's sugar industry, signing a divestment agreement with COMPLANT Group of Companies for the privatization of three remaining factories.
Chinese company investing US$156m in industry
PRIME Minister Bruce Golding handed over the remaining state-owned assets in the sugar industry to the China-based company COMPLANT International at Jamaica House yesterday, signalling what both parties say will be a new era of development for the sugar industry in Jamaica.
British sugar refiner Tate and Lyle is in talks with the Jamaica Cane Product Sales (JCPS), the marketing firm for local producers, for a five-year supply deal, starting with 200,000 tonnes in the 2011-12 crop year.
Paul Worthington, regional technical director for Tate and Lyle, says his company is moving to secure most of, if not all, the sugar to be churned locally.
Jamaica Cane Products Sales (JCPS) will survive and remain wedded to state agency Sugar Industry Authority (SIA) as its marketing agent, even after privatisation which wraps up in August.
The Alvin Wint-led commission, that autopsied the industry's organisational structure in the final phase of the transition to full private ownership of all factories, is suggesting that the SIA be strengthened and given more autonomy as an executive agency, and that its research arm, the Sugar Industry Research Institute (SIRI), be retained.
Dear Editor,
Sugar has become very bitter under the PPP. But I never expected it to become this bitter. The PPP’s dismantling of a vital industry was officially recorded and verified in the article ‘Jamaica tops Caribbean sugar output in January’ (SN, March 4). In January 2011, Jamaica produced 22,872 tonnes, Belize 18,283 tonnes and Guyana delivered a shocking 9,806 tonnes. Imagine Belize produced almost double the amount of sugar produced by Guyana. This is the most disturbing legacy of the PPP because the PPP always claimed that it was the master of sugar.
The problem-plagued sugar industry is facing more trouble in the wake of allegations that a substandard supply of the product was shipped to the United States last week. Leading players in the sugar industry are now scampering to determine the accuracy of the reports as Jamaica could be hit with a hefty fine if this is so.
Sunday Gleaner sources say 5,000 of the 7,260 tonnes failed several key tests in the US. Among the alleged problems are that 5,000 tonnes of the sugar churned at Frome fell well below the sweetness standard required. It also failed the colour and moisture-content threshold.
The sugar industry last year lost 750 tonnes of the raw product valued around J$34.5 million, believed to have gone missing while in transit from the sugar factories to the vessels that ship the sweetener to the export markets.
CLARK'S TOWN , Trelawny — A director of the Everglades Farms Limited, which operators the Long Pond and Hampden Estates in Trelawny, on Monday unveiled plans by the company to modernise the Long Pond sugar factory in the parish at a cost of roughly US$6 million.
Minister of Agriculture, Dr Christopher Tufton, says the Jamaican government can no longer be expected to intervene in pricing disputes involving local sugar industry players.
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
DUANVALE, Trelawny — Allan Rickards, the Chairman of the All Island Jamaica Cane Farmers Association (AIJFA), Allan Rickards has blasted the government for what he said was its failure to sign off on a US$30 million loan agreement with the Chinese government for the supply of equipment to the ailing sugar industry.
"We cannot plant (cane) without a tractor and him (Dr Christopher Tufton) can get $60 million of tractors for rice," Rickards told the scores of disgruntled cane farmers at an emergency meeting in the sugar cane growing area of Duanvale last Thursday.
Last Tuesday, the agriculture and fisheries ministry received equipment, valued at $60 million, from the People's Republic of China to aid in its rice production programme.
The equipment includes tractors, harvesters, wagons, boom sprayers and trucks.
Rickards told the farmers that just over three years ago, the Chinese government made an offer to supply $US30 million worth of equipment to the sugar sector, at interest rate of three per cent, repayable over a 13-year period.
But the Jamaica government, Rickards said, has refused to take up the offer.
He argued that successive governments continue to show scant regard for the sugar industry, which he said was vital to the economy.
"Which industry is more important that sugar?" he asked. Is it cassava?, is it rice? or is it because 7,000 of the people who deliver canes are small people?"
Dr Tufton however, told the Observer that although the interest rate for the loan was relatively "cheap" the government could not take up the offer based of fiscal constraints.
"The fact is that the loan has to be repaid and when considered in the context in an economy which is under serious financial strain, which has an IMF (International Monetary Fund) agreement where fiscal space is limited, guided by the ministry of finance and the Cabinet, priorities have to be given to how loans are approved and which ones get approved," he said.
Dr Tufton said that the sugar divestment programme being pursed by the government will enable the private sector to capitalise the sugar industry, which will be of benefit to the estates and the private farmers.
" It would definitely be an inconsistency if we were to secure loans while we are divesting to give the private sector the role that they really ought to be playing, in terms of private business," he said.
The cane farmers meeting was called to discuss a raft of issues said to be negatively impacting on the cultivation of the crop in the parishes of Trelawny and St James.
Among the issues discussed were the premature end of the 2009/2010 sugar crop at the Long Pond Sugar factory and the planned closure of same factory for one year.
source: jamaicaobserver
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