Dear Editor,
In a letter to SN on May 23 (‘Sugar can be saved if it modifies its plantation mode…’), Clarence Ellis listed some broad proposals to resuscitate the ailing sugar industry and I wish to add my comments.
There is no doubt that Guyana’s largest and most important corporation, Guysuco, has been on the skids since it was nationalized in 1976 with production see-sawing downwards. Its viability is being affected by several factors, the most important being its inability to improve management and administration which have manifested themselves by poor operational efficiency.
Since nationalization, extraction rates and annual production have been dropping due to Guysuco’s lack of overall ability and responsibility for planning, and its coordination of research, production, harvesting, transport and processing of sugarcane. Efforts by Guysuco to develop the sugar industry in a timely manner through diversification, improve and maintain its factories, invest in new facilities and equipment, and increase acreage were hamstrung by managers who lacked the skills and proven capability to accomplish its objectives of productivity and profitability. Recently at the peak of its first grinding season it ran out of a key chemical used to process the cane juice at its factories and had to borrow supplies from GWI.
Increasing sugar yields per acre depends on a number of factors, such as the weather, soil fertility, husbandry, and labour relations, and last but not least, drainage and irrigation.
Cane-harvest labour has been increasingly scarce, and serious shortages at some estates have disrupted harvest operations forcing Guysuco into purchasing expensive mechanized harvesting/ loading equipment which is difficult to justify in the light of Guyana’s high unemployment, the need to absorb the remigrants from Barbados and the existing field layout. Skeldon Estate is preparing additional lands for cane cultivation to satisfy the capacity of its new factory. Droughts depress sugar yields significantly and therefore irrigation as one of the parameters for development of the new lands will be most important. Unfortunately, Skeldon has no additional source of water to meet the irrigation needs of the additional lands being put under cultivation.
Its existing source is irrigation abstraction from the Canje River/Torani Canal which presently does not have sufficient resource in a year of average rainfall to meet the irrigation demands of existing cultivation of rice and sugar in Region 6, and over-abstraction will cause saline intrusion up the Canje River to the detriment of all users.
Skeldon Estate is apparently hoping to meet its irrigation/navigation water shortfall for additional cane cultivation from its primary source by re-circulating existing supplies, but quality compliance, evaporation and other factors are likely to frustrate its efforts.
Therefore, lack of adequate planning to ensure that water was available for its new cultivation before it started land preparation may well create intractable production problems for Skeldon which will further exacerbate the impending disaster Clarence Ellis/Tony Vieira are predicting for the industry, since its projected cane production may not materialize to meet the demands of the new factory at Skeldon.
With impending closures of the sugar industry in St Kitts, Jamaica and elsewhere, sugar production worldwide is at the cross-roads, and unless Guysuco could provide a quality product at a competitive price without subsidies from any source it cannot survive in the long term as the Government of Guyana is already strapped subsidizing failing entities such as GWl and GPL, while Guyana Bauxite has already gone under and is now managed privately. As Mr Ellis eloquently stated, climate change and forest trades are not as important as fixing Guyana’s crumbling roads and bridges, the power failures, unreliable and poor quality potable water supply, regular flooding of homesteads and farmlands, obsolete vessels providing river transportation, CLICO and GRA, problem sectors of the economy which all require urgent fixes for the orderly economic and social development of the country. They need the President’s undivided attention to resolve them and not the world’s.
Finally, Mr Ellis is right about the dredging of our rivers and outfall channels. The Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) is spending millions of taxpayers’ dollars on dredging, using outdated methods which are slow and cumbersome and are unlikely to resolve the problem efficiently and effectively. MOA should realize it does not have the know-how in this specialized field and therefore it should seek the technical know-how of experts such as Boskalis International to advise on the type of equipment which is best suited to clear the blocked sluice outfalls and river estuaries quickly and in a cost effective way.
Fortunately, depending on location the dredged material could be used for reclamation, but it would be quite unsuitable to improve soil fertility for crops as claimed by Messrs Ellis/Vieira, since infertile reclaimed soil of the type envisaged will be deficient in nutrients and have toxicity, salinity and alkalinity problems requiring on-farm improvements to make them productive.
Yours faithfully,
Charles Sohan
