Yesterday, you heard the BSCFA chairman making comparisons between the earnings that Belizean farmers have received as compared to neighboring countries. He was making the point that, in his opinion, their payment for the last crop season could have been better.
Well, the millers rebutted by insisting that in those countries with higher sugar cane payouts, the farmers are more efficient, and their production costs are also lower.
Here's how they made that point today:
Malcom "Mac" McLachlan, VP, International Relations, ASR/BSI
"In all this discussion, all this debate about what should the mill so, what the farmers need and what they deserve. One really important thing we are missing in this conversation is the heart of the matter, the heart of the problem here is very low cane productivity in the cane farm and very inefficient ways in harvesting and delivering that cane. I'll give you a couple of examples but the average cane yield per acre in Belize hasn't actually changed much over the last ten years. It is still about 17 tons of cane per acre. The regional average is about 35 tons of cane per acre. If you think about it, the more cane you grow on one piece of land, the more revenue you received because you have a lot more cane and you're already putting the same inputs in to that piece of land. Similarly, harvesting and delivery is something that really needs to be completely changed and improved because at the moment farmers have to pay a tremendous amount of money to harvest and deliver their cane. Which isn't the same in other industries so I think there needs to be a real focus in this country and north of the country on how to improve the productivity on less land so not to produce too much cane they're not to milled but to product cane on less land more efficiently because that puts money in farmers' pockets. That then helps cane farmers become more viable. No mill in the world can subsidize the inefficiencies in the cane farm here. Nor, I believe, is never well forgotten."
