Dear Editor,
It’s difficult to know where to start, but on the basis of my observations most of the problems are caused because GuySuCo has been really badly managed over the years, and as we have seen worldwide, governments can’t run anything. Our politicians are not only incompetent, but corruption has also wreaked havoc on GuySuCo. The current management of the industry is the worst in history, totally unable to resolve the issues of the industry.
The conundrum in our sugar industry is caused by the fact that internationally our competitors have fully mechanized. Places like Hawaii, which used to produce 30% of the world’s sugar in the 60’s couldn’t mechanize because it’s too hilly for harvesters and they abandoned sugar from the 90’s to 2016. We are not even close to making a machine friendly layout for a heavy mechanical harvester and cane haulage trailers [CHT] infield, this is problem No. 1. It is compounded by problem #2 which is that the labour force is dwindling mainly since we can’t pay more to cut the cane since we are competing with machines. Also, frankly no one can say that the Guyana sugar workers have not been a non-confrontationist workforce, and I am saying that in the kindest way I can. Since the 70’s it was becoming clear to anyone with a functioning brain, that there is an acute shortage of labour. Editor, between 1995 and 2005 thousands of workers left the sugar industry, I think nearly 10,000. # 3. is the weather, in the past the Guyana sugar industry had a grinding period of around 200-220 days per year.
Editor as the workforce was dwindling and they were unable to mechanize, the industry and the production have been contracting. Since the problem was not fully understood, they resorted to closing factories because our workforce couldn’t supply the cane to grind economically, actually part of the problem is not having managers who understood this problem. If we are to mechanize we have to remember that in this country you can cut cane for 200-220 days by hand in the rain by burning two or even three days in advance of the rain, but the same cannot be true for mechanical harvesting. Also, the closures never made sense to me, the sugar cane crop is heavy, in our heyday we processed over 3 million tons of the stuff per year, but a shortage of labour is looming, so they close the Diamond factory!? And left LBI and Enmore factories in place. As a manager of GuySuCo at our monthly regional meetings, I stood at the pan loft of LBI Factory and was amazed at how close the Enmore factory actually was, by road it seemed so much further. Diamond Estate had farmers canes and cultivation going as far south as Soesdyke, and they closed that factory, and left LBI and Enmore factories? Also in 2016 we closed Wales factory, in my day some of the best cane in Demerara was at Wales estate. It’s way upriver from the coast so the land is higher with better drained fertile soils. Wales also had numerous farmers, so why not close Uitvlugt? It has poor low-lying badly drained acid soil, the highest rainfall.
I sat in the boardroom of GuySuCo and listened to managers telling us why they can’t achieve our planting programmes, since they are unable to do land preparation more than 70 to 75 days in most years, when these same people don’t understand that to cut cane by machine if the industry is to mechanize to survive, then they can’t have a 200 days per year crop it would have to be more like 100 days per year, 40 days first crop 60 days second crop. Since 2016 Editor I realized that, from 1990 to 2009 I was working in television, we are closing factories when we should be closing cultivations, thereby shortening our crops to 100 days per year. This is not unique; it just so happens that in Louisiana, USA, their cropping season is 100 days per year from September to December. And they are producing 4 million tonnes of sugar per year. Editor, harvesting by machine means that the layout has to facilitate everything, harvesting and removing the heavy cane stalks from the fields by CHT, then, after that happens the land must have a layout to also allow inter row tillage and other mechanical husbandry operations to remove the effects of the compaction caused by the heavy machines harvesting and removing the canes from the fields. Editor, a good growing cane field can produce 60 to 70 tonnes of sugar cane per hectare so removing the canes by machine causes a lot of soil compaction. Being unable to mechanize since we don’t have the skills and are buying the wrong type of machines to do anything right, has been the biggest problem which GuySuCo has. In 2021 I told the Board that this problem will not go away, that they should go to Louisiana, USA, and learn what they are doing there, they have similar rainfall, similar low-lying swampy land like us, but are quite successful sugar cane growers, I even gave GuySuCo the name of a consultant in Louisiana who can help them. Bring him here for a few months to tell them what to do. Instead, these people brought advisors from Cuba!!
An additional benefit is that when you shorten the harvesting period you are reaping less and less of the cane close to or in the rainy seasons and would give a better yield and better Juice quality [TC/TS] the next year.
Also, the industry I joined in 1966 had no contractors, the workers did everything during the out of crop period. It’s been a big part of the destruction of the corporation, they are contracting out everything including transporting their labourers. There are literally thousands of contractors delivering various materials and services to the company, enriching those who help them to get the contracts, managers and politicians etc. they are the ones benefiting from the huge amount of our tax money given to the Guyana Sugar Industry by government, not the workers or you and me.
Mechanization in Guyana will have to visualize a 100 days per year crop, and they must take the nonsense they are doing now in their fields, back to the drawing board.
Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira
