Dear Editor,
The Belle Vue Cane Farmers’ Cooperative Society started as a Bookers Sugar Estates initiative in small cane farming in the very early 1950s. Fifty-two cane cutters (now harvesters) were selected from each of the estates and settled with their families in the created community, each with an allotment of fifteen acres of cane, a garden plot, and standard housing.
The conditions of occupancy included rental and fees for technical assistance provided by the company to help farmers to grow canes which were sold to the Wales Estate factory. The income derived from the sale of canes could also be utilised to purchase materials such as fertiliser and related agricultural ingredients. For social development activities, including sports, a community centre and sports ground were also provided.
Belle Vue became what may be described as a nuclear community amongst the earlier established villages on the West Bank of the Demerara River.
When in 1964 the Sugar Producers Association formulated a more comprehensive plan for the development of small cane farming as a sustainable component of the industry following one of several interactions between Sir Jock Campbell and Premier Cheddi Jagan, a Cane Farming Development Corporation was established, jointly with the Royal Bank of Canada and Barclays Bank DCO as a special window for financing its development. This initiative spurred the passing of legislation to provide for, among other things, the establishment of a National Cane Farming Com-mittee; related Cane Farming District Associations; and, most importantly, a statutory contract which set out the economic, technical and administrative provisions of the relationship between ‘Farmer’ and ‘Manufacturer’ (as each estate was described in the accompanying regulations to the act).
One of the stipulations to give legal status to the newly formed farming groups – at Skeldon, Albion/Port Mourant, Rose hall, Diamond, Wales, Leonora, and Uitvlugt – was that they should be registered as cooperatives. The writer, who was involved in this cross-industry exercise, actively collaborated with the Belle Vue Farmers in their registration as a Cane Farmer’s Coopera-tive Society. By then of course they were a more self-assured group, whose experience in the field had made them sufficiently self-sufficient, with their increased productivity generating better financial returns.
While Belle Vue Cane Farmers’ Cooperative Society is indisputably the oldest group of its kind in Guyana, it is worth recording that there were individual farmers known in the industry operating at Buxton, Beterverwag-ting and Plaisance villages who were supplying cane to Enmore and LBI Estate factories a long time before. However, they all grew cane in widely dispersed plots, and as they held no group ownership over identifiable plots of lands, they were deemed ineligible for the soft funding available.
This does not detract from Belle Vue’s special place in our country’s social history. Whatever may be their current weaknesses, surely the remedy (unsustainable as it appears) is not to ‘plough’ up the management team, but to offer its membership constructive guidance and mentoring, with a view to retrieving good governance and stability in the society. The Chief Cooperatives Development Officer must know that such an approach is a substantive part of his/her mandate, and should have so advised his instructor.
The former should not be party to the whimsical dissipation of history by the latter.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
