Dear Editor,
Mechanization is not a strategy as mentioned in article, SN 2025-01-08. GuySuCo can pursue one of three generic strategies: low cost per ton of sugar, focusing on a market segment, or creating differentiated products to sell. The corporation should be consistent with Guyana’s avowed agricultural policy of diversification and pursue a differentiated product strategy with multiple branded product lines, each with distinctive characteristics.
Improving transportation efficiency from field to factory should be part of GuySuCo’s goal in cost minimization or profit maximization. Cost cutting measures are necessary to pursue a successful differentiated product strategy. If the conversion of sugarcane into Crystal Brown Demerara Sugar was making losses, there were two initial solutions for which GuySuCo should have the data and relevant information to pursue, namely:
1. Re-claim the property rights to Demerara Sugar and re-market the product as Genuine Demerara Golden Sugar Crystal – Diamond 10 Plantation Sugar as a branded product.
2. Create multiple income streams using GuySuCo Land Holdings minus the quantity of land needed to produce 100,000 tons of sugarcane.
Multiple income streams using GuySuCo’s excess lands needed for producing 100,000 tons of sugarcane or above by outsourced private sector small and large cane-farmers could enable GuySuCo to pursue agricultural diversification.
Scalable cane-stalk production is the first step. Differentiated products in which profitable business segments subsidize a core product namely brown sugar plus a molasses byproduct, is a logical next step. The byproduct molasses could be the real value-added component in the manufacture of other products such as aged rums. For example, Eldorado from oak-cast barrel aged 5, 12, 15, 21 years old rums. A differentiated product line has much to offer. Sugarcane can remain as the stock from which other high-end products can be made. Let’s not wring our hands in fear.
As we tour and look across the Caribbean, we should weep for King Sugar because the world has not stopped using sugar, an organic product. It is quite a commotion to watch hire car drivers hustling to catch the eye of tourists as they disembark from cruise ships, when there are so many acres of land on the opposite side of the stadium highways, beckoning small farmers to make an alternative living. Delivery transportation could be value added to agriculture. Guyana could re-zone its public right-of-way land stretching in all directions for mass transportation.
Guyana got rid of its first public mass transportation, tied closely to agriculture, namely its railway trains. Railways served Guyana when Guyana was poor. Politicians did not recognize fully the contributions of railways to the National Economy; real value-added sectors involving people, students, workers in multiple sectors of the economy, farmers, and molasses output for export.
Sugar is to Guyana as rice is to Japan and Asia. And as chocolate – milk, cocoa beans and refined sugar, is to Switzerland. Sugarcane can also be turned into Gasahol fuel and other higher valued products, such as Brazilian dulce de leche by choosing technology to harness livestock and sugarcane cultivation; cows eating young cane-tops, like old-time mules and producing milk plus organic fertilizer.
Sugarcane to make differentiated products in agricultural diversification could be a viable business solution, with a substantial reduction in GuySuCo loans or subsidies. GuySuCo has the answer.
Sincerely,
Ganga Persad Ramdas