Dear Editor,
I am singularly amazed that so many people, some even within my academic circle, still cling tenaciously to the idea that sugar should be resuscitated and maintained as the backbone of Guyana’s economy. While many cannot present a valid argument for their position, others proffer as their primary reason that sugar production is a viable economic activity in many of the top ten leading sugar producers: Brazil, India, China, Thailand, Pakistan, Mexico, Philippines, Colombia, Indonesia and United States.
I will not argue too much with them since my purpose for writing this series is seeking to persuade the government to embark on a revolutionary pioneering agriculture diversification, processing and exporting programme at Wales. And hopefully, this pioneering project will serve as a model to other marginally producing estates in the country, and for the world to emulate.
But a few points I wish to state to, and for the benefit of my colleagues:
(1) Cane sugar, comprising about 80% of world sugar production, will always be in demand, and, as a matter of fact, world per capita demand has increased slightly the past few years despite a trending consciousness to eat healthy. Hence, I am not advocating the total abandonment of sugar in Guyana as has happened in so many Caribbean islands and is seemingly the intention of APNU+AFC should they regain the government. No. In comparing Guyana to the Caribbean islands, our economy is structured differently, we enjoy a better economy of scale and comparative advantage in production, our mode of production is different, we have a phenomenally extensive and intricate drainage and irrigation system which we take for granted and have totally neglected, and a world-unique, cheap waterway cane transporting system – thanks to our naturally gifted network of rivers, the Dutch who originally designed it, and most of all, the former slaves who manually dug hundreds of miles of it – all advantages we so ungraciously enjoy.
(2) There are many other socio-economic reasons for Guyana to maintain sugar production. It is, and has mostly been the largest foreign exchange earner, overtaken by gold one or two times, and will be overtaken in the future by oil. Until then, it is most foolhardy to close Guysuco and throw away our main source of foreign exchange so direly needed to buy tractors, medicines, flour and foreign liquor, etc.
(3) But even more important, Guysuco does not only provide foreign exchange through it exports of sugar. Through its by-products such as rum and molasses, and through its indirect multiplier effect upon the economy, it accounts for 20% of revenues earned locally. Thus, when Guysuco does not produce, one out of every five persons’ livelihood and living in Guyana is affected.
(4) Nevertheless, I strongly advocate the gradual reduction of raw sugar’s contribution to the GDP of Guyana to perhaps around three percent. It will help to mitigate the dependency syndrome which has forever rendered Guyana vulnerable to unfavourable terms of trade of both its exports and imports, which, at the macro level, has caused chronic fluctuating fortunes and difficulties in capital financing. On the socio-political side, sugar subsidizing and other government assistance have been one of the root causes of racial and political insecurities in the country. Not to mention, it has perpetuated misery, poverty and illiteracy on the estates.
(5) World market prices tend to closely follow production costs of two or three of the leading world producers who are Brazil, India and China. Hence my question to my colleagues – do you think Guyana which currently produces sugar at a cost of three times the world market price, and has been experiencing a chronic labour shortage problem at both skilled managerial and non-skilled field levels, and whose labour cost is about 60% of production cost, can ever compete, or even come close to these three countries which have a limitless supply of unskilled labour? Which brings me to answer the pre-empted question about mechanization. No, to reduce the enormous labour costs, cultivation and harvesting machines have been tried and have failed miserably all due to the severe adverse geo-climatic conditions. But it would have been nice. At the Domino Sugar Company in Florida I have watched one man and his machine, in harvesting and transporting canes, doing the work that would take maybe fifty men in Guyana to do. (And, by the way, Domino harvests not only sugar, but also billions of US dollars’ worth of subsidies and protection. So, anti-sugar/anti-subsidy advocates in Guyana should take note.)
Okay. So, let’s talk about Wales, as I promised, and the plan I have for launching an agriculture revolution in Guyana from this place called Wales.
Guyana enjoys a tremendous comparative advantage in agriculture over its CARICOM partners, and indeed, over many other countries in the world. One of the main factors that account for this comparative advantage is the extensive, well-drained and irrigated acreage (about 100,000 acres) controlled by Guysuco. It is sad that great portions of these lands are carelessly and ignorantly, perhaps deliberately and vindictively left abandoned.
Under the conviction that much of this land can be meaningfully utilized in other agricultural ways which would contribute greatly to the economy of Guyana, I have designed a plan using Wales as the pioneering base to launch an agriculture revolution.
For the purpose of these agricultural and economic proposals, I would like to introduce a term, the Wales Economic Basin, to refer to the area that most benefited directly and indirectly from the (defunct) Wales Sugar Estate, and roughly extending from Canal Number One Polder, going south to Le Harmonie, the latter, for those who do not know, being a riverain village about ten miles south of Canal One.
This Wales Economic Basin (WEB) consists of about 20,000 acres of prime agricultural land of which originally about 10,000 acres were formerly under the control of Wales Estate, and were formerly provided with first class drainage, irrigation, and access road. These are currently in extremely poor shape. Last March I was practically able to walk over an over-grown canal and not get my sneakers wet. The access dams would now only accommodate four-wheel drive vehicles with added suspensions, and all the bridges need repairs.
The Wales Economic Basin is uniquely more demographically heterogeneous than any other sugar estate, and perhaps any other ten-mile area in Guyana. For this reason, this area experienced fewer strikes and civil unrest. I can safely say that this area is a true microcosm of the ethnic proportionality of present-day Guyana. Hence, any proposed development of this area, I can safely say, will not be racially skewed.
Secondly, the soil in the Wales Economic Basin is equally suitable for sugar cane as it is for a host of other fruit crops and vegetables ‒ more so than any other sugar estate. Ranging from sandy to loam, to pegasse, to clay, the soil in the Basin is probably the most fertile and versatile geological formation in Guyana. At one time the Polders were the centre of cocoa, coffee, pineapple, and citrus production in the Caribbean. The Polders were the fruit and vegetable basket of the Caribbean.
The Wales Estate I knew as a boy was not all sugar. They had a flourishing dairy industry which supplied milk free of cost to all lactating mothers, and to all senior and junior staff and all other employees who wanted to buy. My father was just a cane cutter and I used to go every morning at five a.m. to pick up our pint of milk from the Estate dairy farm. In addition, the Estate was producing and exporting cocoa from its over two hundred acres of cocoa cultivation at the extreme southern boundary of the Estate. As a child growing up, the cocoa we drank was all local cottage product.
The biggest disaster to happen in the area I define as the Wales Economic Basin was when thousands of farmers, and the Wales Estate itself, ploughed down their coffee, cocoa, breadfruit, pineapple and citrus and banana trees to plant sugar cane when sugar prices peaked in the late sixties.
It was like a permanent fix to a cyclical temporary problem. Very shortly after the bottom fell out from sugar. The Basin took a bad hit, the economy of the country shrunk, and the population suffered, a phenomenon that always happens to countries that produce predominantly for export at the expense of feeding itself.
The Wales Economic Basin has the capacity and all the potentials to effectively return to former agriculture eminence, and contribute massively to the development of Guyana, and definitely to help reduce much of the Caribbean extra-regional annual food import bill of almost US $10B.
How this can be done? First and foremost, The Wales Economic Basin must be divorced from the incompetent and corrupt Guysuco, and become a separate Agro-industrial entity under genuine economists and agronomist’s management. It is a good thing that President Ali has hinted at this.
In subsequent articles I will explain how peasant farming, which was a very long time ago recommended by the Moyne Commission, will be the vehicle to reach these objectives, and how I plan to avoid the scourge of absentee farming and landlordism which have been the chief cause of the failure of the Bellevue Pilot Peasant Cane Farming Project which was started in the mid-fifties.
I will dwell on the roles and greater involvements of NAREI, UG, GSA, the Banking Institutions, the diaspora, secondary and tertiary processing, foreign market potentials –especially Toronto and New York, even the Tourism Industry in this agrarian revolution. I will present a model farm with projected cost/benefit analysis over a five-year period to show expected incomes and development.
Of course, I am hopeful the newspapers will continue to facilitate me as they have been kindly doing.
Yours faithfully,
Gokarran Sukhdeo
