Last night, we told you how the Briceno Government averted a political crisis in cane country over the Christmas Holiday weekend. Factions within the more than 2,700 cane farmers were considering protests against the Sugar Industries Control Board and the Sugar Cane Production Committee.
That's because, as you heard the new Agriculture Minister explain last night, the Sugar Board and the SCPC were initially going to implement an adverse production estimate mechanism which would have negatively impacted the approved quota of cane that the farmers would be allowed to deliver. According to Minister Mai, the quota structure, approved by the previous administration, would have penalized the farmers who were most impacted by the extended 2019 drought.
They are trying to recover from that and other past climate change shocks to the industry. Because their fields under-performed during last year's crop, the previous production estimates would have deprived them of huge portions of deliveries this season. We understand that some farmers were particularly incensed by the first proposal because they planted additional acreages of cane to make up for lost revenue due to last year's drought.
The issue is resolved for now, but important personalities in the industry have made the point to the press that the issue of this production estimate is always a cause for dispute between stakeholders. Part of the problem is that the farmers don't have an accurate total of all the cane in the fields.
They have been using their best guesses, based on their experience and knowledge of the industry, and every year, their estimates have been off. Here's how both the Minister of Agriculture, and the lead personality from ASR/BSI independently made that point to us yesterday:
Malcolm (Mac) McLachlan - V.P. International Relations, ASR Group
"We don't want a cane estimate to negatively affect anybody. We want it to be accurate. That's all. We want it to be scientifically based and accurate. So, [the] last thing we want - we want every stick of cane to come in. That's the bottom line. So, I think when we look at these issues, what's important an estimate is that it's based on a scientific basis. Where is the cane? How much cane is there? What can we expect during the crop? We have to be able to plan for that. We're investing heavily in a mill to be able to manage these issues. And when there's a big unknown quantity out there, it makes it more difficult to manage that. The bottom line is it's not up to us anyway. The Sugar Cane Production Committee is a committee. We're a part of that committee, but so is everybody else, including the government. So, at the end of the day, all we're looking for is the most accurate way out of these things. Now, I've been in Belize when there's been a crop estimate of 1.7 million tonnes of cane, which was clearly nonsense. But, we've moved on from those days, and we're more toward the realms of reality. So, that's a good step."
Hon. Jose Mai - Minister of Agriculture, Food Security, Enterprise
"In 2018-2019, Camy, BSI said that they had 212 thousand tonnes of cane, 212,426. Do you know how much they delivered? 198 thousand tonnes, not even 200 thousand. BSCFA said that they had 734 thousand tonnes. They only delivered 681 thousand tonnes. CSP, Corozal Producers said they had 140 thousand tonnes. They only delivered 131 thousand tonnes. Progressive said they 298 [thousand]. They only delivered 284 [thousand]. Total, there were 1.38 million tonnes they said they had. We only delivered 1.296. So, this has been happening for years. It's difficult. The easiest thing to know is how many acres of cane you have. The most difficult thing is to quantify the productivity of the field."
