Publication: Weekend Nation
Paper Section And Page: 28
Paper Date: Fri, Mar 1, 2002
Byline: Latoya Burnham
Unless the sugar harvest begins very soon, canes will be rotting in the fields
by the end of the harvest.
With the island already about three weeks into the dry season, not a stalk of cane has been cut, except some which have been burnt and have already gone to waste. If the harvesting does not begin within the next week, this will be the longest delay, in a decade, for the start of grinding operations.
In 1992 the crop started on March 10 after negotiations broke down repeatedly and had to be referred to then Prime Minister Erskine Sandiford (now Sir Lloyd). Plantation manager at Vaucluse, Charles Downie, said the soil in that St Thomas area was particularly shallow and had already begun to crack under the heat.
"We don't have a deep soil like St John and St George and it would tend to dry out more because it is not able to hold the water," said Downie.
He added that the D74541 cane variety would be the first to feel the effects of such drying, and while he could not put a dollar value to how much could be lost, he said if the situation persisted without a start in the crop, it could translate into losses of about three to four tonnes per acre. The manager at Applewhaite Plantation, who wished not to be named, said when the factories started grinding they would test the sucrose content of the canes to determine how much sugar could be obtained.
"But until then you really can't say. Right now the canes are ripe and ready for cutting," he said, adding that this year his plantation would be cutting about 650 acres.
Meanwhile, however, a number of plantations have been suffering another problem burnt fields that can't be harvested because the factories are not yet grinding. David Marshall, manager at Buttals Plantation, St George, revealed that this week alone they lost 470 tonnes of canes from 19 acres, which could have generated $33 000 in revenue.
"There is absolutely nothing we can do with them right now, and the longer the factories take to get going, the greater the likelihood of a repeat, since the amount of dry trash in the fields is increasing," Marshall explained. "Right now the factories need at least a week after lighting up, so even if an agreement is reached today, that's at least another week before anything can happen. Every week added to the delay this year is a week off the growing season for next year's crop, and that's another problem."
On the question of the loss of sucrose content as the dry season continues and the canes remain unharvested, an official at the Agronomy Research and Variety Station in St George said it could be tested by an instrument called a refractometer, which measures the percentage of solids in the juice in a measurement known as brix.
"When the refractometer gives a reading of 22 brix and up, it is ripe. "Once cane get two months of dryness it starts to ripen. When the rains stop and it is not getting any more water, it can no longer grow. As it starts to get drier we will begin losing the canes as the content dries out," said the agronomist.
Director of the West Indies Central Sugar Cane Breeding Station, P. Seshagiri Rao, said they had done some measurements of canes in their fields and they were approaching the maximum maturity.
"As it is now, we are ready to harvest. The canes normally deteriorate when the rains start continuously. If we delay too long, it will dry out," he said.
Rao noted that the last part of the crop would suffer.
"We would end up going into the rainy season. Because of the delay we will encounter problems with loss of sugar and also a short growth time with next year's crop," he said.