Dear Editor,
I am forced to respond to a letter from Mr Raymond Sangster the General Manager, Agricultural Services of GuySuCo, which was published in Stabroek News on December 9 captioned ‘Conversion to mechanical harvesting is not the major contributory factor to the reduction in cane yields.” It was a response to my letter of December 5.
Mr Sangster must be implying that his CEO Mr Bhim and Komal Chand are seeing visions when the say that there are “no canes in the fields”; that the Bank of Guyana is publishing phantom statistics when they keep showing us precipitous drops in production in the sugar industry annually. I am now very sure that we have uncovered the type of thinking, or lack thereof, which exposes GuySuCo as a corporation producing less and less sugar, because we have people who do not see that very much is wrong with the industry. Nowhere in his long repudiation of what I said, is there any admission that he as General Manager of Agricultural Services whose responsibility it is to influence agricultural policy, is not doing his job since he is not growing cane in our fields only grass, and offers no indication as to why that is so. As far as he is concerned all is well in GuySuCo. In the real world Mr Sangster should be standing on the road looking in at GuySuCo from that vantage point, instead of writing from the inside, telling us how wonderfully well they are doing.
Well, it is not acceptable. And much of what he says does not agree with what I wrote, and the proof of the pudding is that the annual production figures of this ailing corporation tell us that I am right and he is wrong. He is painting a rosy picture for the public, to cover the incompetence, the inexperience and the optimism which permeates every failed estimate, every failed developmental plan and every failed strategy produced by GuySuCo over the past 15 years. Not one has been on target.
I am now forced to highlight one or two elements of nonsense contained in the letter Mr Sangster wrote.
1. He for example alleges that they have built an agricultural tool locally to undo the huge ruts and the damage that comes with it, that the mechanical harvesters make when they are reaping cane in the same soft badly-drained clay soil I have referred to. This did not form part of my early letter, Editor, but GuySuCo’s drainage today is the worst it has ever been. Mr Sangster tells us that they are using a spacing of 1.7 meters (5.77 ft.). My information tells me that the wider tracks which would reduce the ground bearing pressure of the cane harvesters so they would not destroy the field with these huge ruts being experienced at present, require more like a 6 ft spacing. And at the field visited (no date, time or place will be identified since I want to protect the person/persons who took me to see it from fear of victimisation since whatever else this country is, it is not a democracy), I saw the cane harvester tracks walking on the row which it had just harvested to the left of the machine to reap the row it was on, I saw that myself, Editor, so Mr Sangster is either not familiar with his own field or he is misrepresenting the situation. Perhaps he would be interested in the following found at: http://www.guysuco.com/
tenders/tender_documents/Mechanical%20Harvester.pdf
and I quote part of it: “The soils within GuySuCo cultivation comprise mainly cohesive/adhesive clays. Operational requirements dictate operating in wet conditions where soil build up on components can be a significant issue. Under some anticipated field conditions, the soil may be reduced to liquid mud, which can penetrate axle seals, etc. on equipment of inadequate design. Therefore Chopper harvesters fitted with tracked undercarriage and configured for operation under wet field conditions in green or burnt crops with minimal row spacing of 1.8 to 2 meters.” 2 metres, not 1.7 metres, as Mr Sangster says that he is doing. This is this sort of attention to detail which separates the high level performing manager from one who only gives excuses and blames the rain when it is impossible to show that today the rainfall is higher than it was 50 years ago.
And no one in the industry I have spoken to knows of any situation where harvesters worked for 16 hours in any one day, and reaped 40 tons per hour, and I believe the media and the opposition would be happy to turn up at any location when Sangster is prepared to demonstrate that this is possible. The harvesters in Guyana reap around 150-200 tonnes in an eight hour day, so perhaps Mr Sangster will also be kind enough to direct us to a location where they are working 16 hours a day. Also 16 hours of harvesting cannot be conducted without heavy lights with generators, but we do not know of any location where there are heavy lights and generators.
By not understanding that our conditions require special wide tracks to reduce the ground bearing pressure requiring more like a 6 ft inter row spacing, a lack of experience and knowledge is being demonstrated in this important, if not crucial matter, since what I have quoted above was written specifically for GuySuCo by people who design and manufacture mechanical harvesters. I have said that this industry cannot turn around not with this chairman, this board or these managers.
2. Editor I would like to know where Mr Sangster learned his mathematics from. It is impossible to fill in the big drains between the beds (no matter what they are used to) and end up with almost the same slope as before. In addition instead of planting across the bed as is the normal practice, they are planting along the converted beds. Editor, we abandoned this type of planting along the beds decades ago since the rainfall cannot run off to the drains because the rows are running parallel to the drains rather than at right angles to them which causes water to lodge between the rows creating even softer spots on the inner side of the rows. In addition where they are filling these drains is sinking, producing a very undulating cambre and low spots running along the beds contributing to more soft spots within the field. The acidity is being undone according to him by the application of low grade rock phosphate, but he fails to tell us the rate of application since one or two tonnes per acre will not work. I maintain that the conversions, which are satisfying Mr Sangster, be examined by trained, competent personnel who should submit a report to the Parliament. After all, Parliament is now being asked to release $4 billion from the Consolidated Fund to bail out the sugar industry from the crushing debt which they now carry, so to protect the workers they have an obligation to understand exactly what is going on in this industry, otherwise they will be doing the sugar workers a gross disservice.
Since we are mechanized to apply fertilizer and other mechanical field activities, which enhance yields according to Sangster, we are supposed to be in good shape and the mechanisation policy of the corporation is well in hand on at least three estates. But I still can’t get anyone to verify that what he is saying is true. No one has seen any of the mechanical operations which he alleges are routinely being done and there are still “no canes in the field.” So they can’t be working very well if in fact they are doing it at all.
3. I won’t go further, I think that I have made my point, but I have this final question/observation: I had advocated the diversification of cane cultivation to a more economical, less labour intensive, less expensive alternative form of agriculture or aquaculture, since I hold the view that we can be very big aquaculture producers. We have the field layout and the water which are the main ingredients for this to happen, and that there should be a phasing out of sugar cane from the cultivation and a phasing in of an alternative which field trials will tell us through our Other Crops Division. I now hold the view that this Other Crops Division should answer to Parliament, since we don’t want jobs to be lost in the industry, but neither do we want to continue down this road to disaster when all of the hand labour has disappeared from the industry and we are operating a poorly mechanised, inefficient industry which continues to be a drain to the national treasury. Mr Sangster has been very clear in his letter that he and therefore GuySuCo, are pursuing this disastrous course of planting sugar cane, no matter what. This is not acceptable. The same reasons why we have difficulty mechanising the industry, ie, this unique field layout and heavy rains due to our geological location gives us a perfect combination to be a world class aquaculture country.
4. Since they have questioned my information on this matter with this nonsense, I am now forced to ask an embarrassing question: Why is it that most estates, especially Albion, only received fertilizer for the second crop of 2012 during the first crop of 2013? Almost six months late? Is that the way to put more canes in the fields?
Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira
