( L - R ) ANTHONY JOHNSON, RICHARD JONES AND DERRICK HEAVEN
As part of our special year-long focus on the agricultural sector, several stakeholders in the sugar industry were recently invited to an Editors' Forum to discuss the current state of the industry and share plans for the way forward. Following are comments from some of the participants.
IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR, if you run a factory and you are poorly turning out 45 per cent you are throwing away a half per cent of the sugar, you are fired, usually you resign before the end of the crop. That is obvious, you can't manage and if you do it more than one year then you walk. What I am saying is that these things come down to the facts of the game. Jamaica is capable of producing excellent sugar, the point of the thing is that the books will tell you, the best canes are factory-efficient operations.
HILL CANE VS FLAT LAND CANE
Hill cane is not supposed to be efficient because in the hills you have a problem with roads, you have a problem with erosion, you have a problem with small plots of land, yet the most efficient factories are in the hills.
The factories on the plain ought to be the most efficient. The factory that ought to be the worst is the one in the wettest area with the most unfavourable circumstances - that's Duckenfield. Last year, Duckenfield was the most efficient factory. So it points back, if Duckenfield can be doing well, at a time when everybody else is doing bad, it is nothing to do with the Jamaican industry, it has to do with the fact that Duckenfield happens to have good management.
RE-ENGINEERING, REORGANISATION, REPLANTING
When you find yourself in a crop that produces 180,000 tonnes, then 160,000 tonnes, then 124,000 tonnes, it means there are severe problems that have impacted, and instead of putting our heads in the sand and philosophising, we need to have a thorough look at it.
I don't know what the Brazilians have done and I don't know whether they will give us access to what their findings are, but what I can say, it is clear that quite along the line from the planting of the cane to the factory operation to the overall management, all of these things need to be looked at very seriously.
FACTORY PERFORMANCE AND FIELD PERFORMANCE
The Government, instead of putting in money purely to service debt, ought to be putting in money to re-engineer, to bring up to date and to produce the kind of factory performance and field performance which is necessary. But we could talk until the cows come home, if you don't reorganise the fields, the fields are in bad condition, you go through and look through them, they are in poor condition and it needs money to do that. The factories, many of them are in poor condition and they need re-engineering, I mean simple things need to be done.
