Sugar crop 2004 worst in history

THE Trinidad Islandwide Canefarmers Association (TICFA) has described this current sugar crop as being the worst in living memory. TICFA public relations officer Lallan Rajaram said farmers were facing losses amounting to millions of dollars while thousands of tonnes of cane remained unharvested and were left to rot in the fields and/or weighing stations. “After last year’s crop, we thought the worst was behind us, but it now seems that with only two months left for this crop, we will have the majority of our cane still in the fields,” a worried Rajaram said.

He added since the start of the crop in early January, less than 200,000 tonnes of cane had been delivered to the Sugar Manufacturing Company Ltd’s (SMCL) Usine Ste Madeleine factory. The SMCL is the company formed by Government to replace the defunct Caroni 1975 Ltd. “Now, with less than two months left in the crop we still have over 600,000 tonnes of cane to harvest,” Rajaram said, adding that the SMCL had targeted June 11 as the closing date for this year’s crop season. Rajaram observed while the weather had been “fairly good” in getting out the farmers’ cane, he attributed numerous factory breakdowns and on-going controversy at the weighing scales as major reasons behind the slow harvesting of cane.

“There were so many factors that were beyond the farmers’ control, like the factory breakdowns, that at one time cane was just piling up in the factory’s yards and at the weighing scales,” he said. He also revealed the present ratio of cane to sugar had reached an unprecedented high of 16:1. Rajaram said the association was requesting a meeting with both Agriculture Minister Jarette Narine and Trade and Industry Minister Ken Valley, to investigate how the industry was presently being run. They noted that farmers were receiving late payments for cane already sold to the company. “Farmers from all of the areas have almost three fortnights of payments to collect and we have to take loans to pay our workers, and when the banks call for their payments they don’t want to hear we haven’t received our payments as yet,” Rajaram said. Efforts to contact SMCL chairman Prem Nandlal yesterday, proved futile.