Dear Editor,
Recently I was invited as a cane farmer to attend a meeting of the National Cane Farming Committee (NCFC). Many things struck me about this meeting, for example:
- It was the first time I was so invited in the almost 20 years that I have been a cane farmer; (I have previously attended occasional meetings of farmers who supply canes to Rose Hall Estate).
- I was surprised by the preponderance of ‘officials’ representing various GUYSUCO functions from the Head Office and the Estates plus the Ministry of Agriculture, the Republic Bank and the Secretariat of the NCFC. This was also the case in the previous meeting according to the minutes of that meeting which identified a total of 10 ex-officios and 8 farmers but, remarkably, the absentees were in the majority.
- The foregoing bore little resemblance to provisions in the Cane Farming Act (understandably, the Act is quite old; but my repeated attempts to get some clarification from the CEO of the NCFC were fruitless)
- The ‘Action Sheet’ from the previous meeting of the NCFC identified 17 items of which only one was recorded as “completed” while all the others were shown as “to be followed up” i.e no action; the discussion of ‘current’ items followed the same pattern of indifference, deflections, deferrals and delays ad nauseam.
What was pellucid and disturbing was the diminishing output from private cane farmers as well as the complete discontinuation of cane farming by others while some are in the process of selling off their farms.
Should we not examine the reasonableness of current expectations from cane farmers in particular, if not GUYSUCO in general? In any event, I believe the apparent uselessness of the NCFC needs to be investigated.
Yours faithfully,
Nowrang Persaud
