Presentation on cane farming appears more a concoctive defence

Dear Editor,

For the benefit of relevant stakeholders, including those who would defend the sugar industry with obfuscations about its cane farming sector, see letter `All private cane farmers treated alike’ (SN April 22, 2015), this writer can legitimately lay claim to being an active participant in pioneering the development of small cane farming across the industry in the 1960’s, not only by organising the groups into cooperatives a category which is omitted from GuySuCo’s reference to ‘private farmers’; but also a contributor to the drafting of what is known as the National Cane Farming Committee Act (1965).

The absence of any mention of the legislation reveals the lack of any serious knowledge of the subject and its development. A glaring example of misinformation is in the reference to the ‘Belle Vue Coop Society’. Its development was by no means a Wales Estate initiative. This imaginative creation was a Bookers Sugar Estate project which involved the selection of fifty-five (55) sugar workers and families from various estates to become members of an experimental community of farmers, with allocations of cane lands of 15 acres each, housing, each with kitchen garden, community centre and sports facility. It was not until other farming groups were later developed at Canal No. 2; Stanleytown/La Retraite; Sisters/Good Intent; and Free and Easy, that this writer got involved in organising them all into Cooperatives so that they could legally qualify for loans from the Cane Farming Development Corporation (CFDC) specially established to provide a facilitative financial window.

This same developmental programme included the establishment of three Co-ops at Skeldon Estate, two at Albion Estate and the biggest of all – Good Samaritan (since defunct) at Rose Hall Estate.

Supporting legislation to the NCFC Act, were/are the Cane Farmers Contract (General Conditions) Rules, and the Cane Farmers Special Funds Act. The Contract entered into between each farmer/Cooperative and the Manufacturer was legally the same across all estates, thus ensuring consistent compliance. A breach of the contract became a breach of the law. Could GuySuCo testify to knowing enough of the law (provisions of which are obviously outdated), much more verifiably attest to consistency in implementing those provisions that must still be applicable.

One must query the pretence that the National Cane Farming Committee exists, and the ability for anyone to legally pronounce on its behalf. Who are its members? Some farmers would appreciate such information.

There is mention of ‘forums from time to time’ as if this were a gratuitous gesture on the part of GuySuCo, when in fact the extant (non-amended) legislation requires regular statutory meetings of the NCFC.

En passant the obfuscation refers to ‘new farmers’ at Blairmont Estate when in fact the prospective parties have not yet been allocated any (unidentified) land.

The credibility of the presentation is further strained by the irrelevant mention of the treatment of farmers’ cane by the factory, as if again this was an industry initiative and not a process which emerged out of the aforementioned Contract.

Unfortunately the presentation appears more a concoctive defence in which only the presenter can believe.

It is one example of situations in which GuySuCo must face up to its organisational frailties.

That there is no consistent approach to providing financial assistance to private cane farmers is also evidence that the claim that they are alike is erroneous.

 

Yours faithfully,
E.B. John