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And while the sugar industry still has a long road ahead with the commission - which will take a year or more - the news is still good in sugar where the crop is fetching record high prices.
And while sugar can make record earnings despite the dispute - not so for the banana and citrus industry.
For the first eleven months of 2023, revenues
from bananas were down by 27 percent, while citrus earnings were down by 10.7 million dollars.
But while things may seem bleak, Mai says it's not over for these industries just yet.
Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"These industries have been undergoing very, very difficult challenges. Citrus disease is just there. We have been working with them. We are trying. There are new varieties of citrus being tested at this time and some of them are starting to bear. They look pretty promising, but the disease has caused a lot of damage to citrus. The prime minister has appointed a taskforce to look at the situation in citrus and to make recommendations."
"On that taskforce my ministry is being represented by Hugh O'Brien again and they are supposed to get back anytime now, I think in the next week or so with a report to determine what do we do with citrus. But I agree with you that citrus is in a very difficult position right now."
"Bananas, Bananas has been similar, not as bad because of climate change. Bananas biggest problem is sigatoka and the high rate of fertilization required. So during the time when the price of fertilizer just increased by 300%, the farmers were unable to fertilize as was required by the plant so we had a dip in production one and two; because of the excess rains, we had the sigatoka which just got in and made a lot of damage. And you know, when you have sigatoka you have to do de-leaf, when you de-leaf the banana plant and you only leave tree functioning leaves on the plant, the fruit that is harvested from that plant will not make it to the US market or to the European market because it ripens on the way so that that fruit has to be disregarded for the export market."
"This has caused significant problems. We are seeing slight increases over last year quarter from the report I got. So hopefully we can be, we have made available a small loan facility for them to try to procure inputs that is required for the banana sector. We are seeing a marginal increase but we don't see the increase that yet, but we are hoping that if the weather permits and we don't have much rainfall, that we will be able to control sigatoka and fertilizer prices are going down now so hopefully farmers will be able to apply."
