Sucrose content plan should be deferred

The Ministry of Agriculture should defer, for at least five years, its plan to pay cane farmers for supplied sugar cane on the basis of its sucrose content, instead of by weight. In turn, it should seek to have the West Indies Cane Breeding Station have yet another look at the question of developing varieties of cane with high sucrose content suited to Trinidad and Tobago’s soil at existing estates, and rainfall. During this period the Agriculture Ministry should allow, starting from 2006 for a payment formula for farmers’ cane based on a mix say of one third according to sucrose content, and two-thirds by weight. But for the Ministry of Agriculture to impose its planned payment formula strictly according to the sucrose content of the farmers’ sugar cane, either without the benefit of a high sucrose variety suitable to the sugar estates’ peculiar mix of soil and drainage conditions, or allowing the farmers time to effect cost effective strategies, may spell disaster for the industry.

While it should be anticipated that both the European producers of beet sugar and the large producers of cane sugar, for example Australia and Brazil, will protest what they will describe as an indirect Trinidad and Tobago Government subsidy of our farmers’ sugar cane, nonetheless we have to effect strategies to protect the industry. The Ministry of Agriculture’s announcement that it would introduce payment for farmers’ canes by sucrose content, however unwittingly, conveyed the impression that cane farmers were in a position to grow sugar cane capable of producing across the board cane on their estates and/or on Caroni (1975) Limited’s lands which would provide the magic ratio of eight or nine tonnes of cane to one tonne of sugar.

The truth is that Trinidad and Tobago’s troubling ratio of 13 (or thereabouts) tonnes of sugar cane to one tonne of sugar  is not the result of perverse indifference on the part of sugar cane farmers, but the vexing conditions of our soil, rainfall and drainage, vis a vis their estates. Even Caroni (1975) Limited and its predecessor, Tate and Lyle owned Caroni Limited, had been faced with this problem. And while, admittedly, there can be improvement, as in most any other field, it would be largely marginal. Another factor, which the Agriculture Ministry should examine, is that while Caroni (1975) Limited had the resources to evaluate the varieties of sugar cane produced as a result of careful research done by the Cane Breeding Station, the average cane farmer, indeed no cane farmer at all, has those means. The problem of low sucrose content of our sugar cane is not an overnight phenomenon, nor is it a blame which you can, willy nilly, accord to cane farmers.  It has been there for centuries. Indeed, Caroni Limited (then owned by Tate and Lyle) had pointed out in a quarterly bulletin — Sugar and the Land —published in November of 1967: “Sugar is mainly grown on some of the inherently least fertile agricultural land in the country.”

Ten years earlier, in 1957,  the Food and Agriculture Organisation had stated bluntly: “It must be remembered that the sugar estate area, although intensely cultivated, is naturally poorly endowed for agriculture; the soil is generally of low fertility and difficult to drain....” The average person tends to compare Barbados’ sugar yield in relation to the tonnage of sugar cane supplied, to ours, while ignoring that the soil and drainage conditions et cetera of Barbados are far less troublesome than in the lands under sugar cane cultivation in Trinidad and Tobago. Admittedly, there is agricultural land in TT that is better suited to the growing of sugar cane than that under cultivation. But it should be understood that the decision to grow sugar in the West part of Trinidad, which still obtains largely to this day, had been dictated by twin factors. One: The then colony did not have available roadways, and the question of transport was critical. Two: The proximity of the lands selected for the sugar estates had to be close to the sea, and/or connected to the sea by river, and therefore easy access to shipping.

And even when the roads were developed the accent was on relative proximity to shipping. Sugar was grown, for example, in River Estate, Diego Martin; in St James; in Port-of-Spain, along and off areas around what is known today as Tragarete Road; St Ann’s, from where Normandie Hotel now stands to Sydenham Avenue;  Brechin Castle, Waterloo, Esperanza, Woodford Lodge, Forres Park, Ste Madeleine, Malgretoute, Bronte, Reform and what have you. There are lands in Trinidad which if the necessary research, evaluation and variety selection are undertaken by the Central Cane Breeding Station, will, probably be in a position to produce canes with a higher sucrose content than those grown on today’s existing sugar estates.
But the price of the land would be prohibitive, way beyond the reach of cane farmers. And even should there be cane farmers in a position to pay for them, any attempt at production of sugar cane on the land(s) would prove frighteningly uneconomic.  Housing and industrial development, particularly within the past decade, has taken care of that. The reality is that the met demands for housing and industry, along and off the East-West Corridor, have led to an almost meteoric rise in land prices, pushing sugar and other areas of agriculture on the back burner. In addition, the cane farmers will have to contend with the prospect of acquiring heavy agricultural machinery, including mechanical harvesters, heavy duty crawler tractors, as well as the added purchasing of fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides. 

All of these, even as the looming end of the Convention of Lome, battered by globalisation, signals goodbye to Trinidad and Tobago’s preferential entry sugar quota to the European Union, inevitably to be followed by the abolishing of the preferential entry quota to the United States.
The grim battle for the survival of the country’s sugar industry is just around the proverbial corner. That we have to add value to our sugar is one of today’s realities. A grim reality, however, is that if Government makes it harder for the cane farmers, through an all too early introduction of payment for their sugar cane via the sucrose content process, the industry will have little chance of survival, even in the medium term. Had the restructuring of the sugar industry taken place ten years or even five years ago, then cane farmers, as a result of the Convention of Lome, would have had that much longer to adjust. The sucrose content plan must be deferred, or thousands of workers, their future already under siege by globalisation, will fall early victims on the battlefield of Government’s ill-advised, premature move on sucrose content.