Dear Editor,
The sugar cane plant Saccharum Officinarum has been hybridized and bred as an annual plant i.e. it takes 12 months to germinate and grow to ripeness. We in Guyana have two crops per year, the first crop usually reaped from February to April is about 40% of our total cultivation, and the second crop, July to November, is around 60%. The reason we have divided our crops into two in this fashion, is because in Guyana, the May-June rains interrupts the harvesting cycle; as far as I can discover this happens nowhere else in the world.
Currently the sugar cane industry in Guyana, after all the closures, is around 17,000 hectares, this is in keeping with the government’s estimations to use these 17,000 hectares to produce 90 to 100 thousand tonnes of sugar per year. Since we currently have 17,000 hectares, given our factories’ capacity, we need around 7 months 220 days to harvest our canes, but in Guyana we cannot get 220 dry days between January to April or between July to November. So we harvest 40% or 6,800 hectares in the first crop Jan -April and10,200 hectares in our second crop July to November.
In 2020, this country produced 88,868 tonnes of sugar from this same 17,000 hectares’ but in 2023 we are struggling to produce 60,000 tonnes. In Tuesday’s KN, there is a letter from one Angelita Karran captioned, “Guyana is in good hands” – the writer informs the country that Sasenarine Singh is an “astute and competent CEO” since he promised to produce 60,000 tonnes of sugar this year and his performance has exceeded all expectations. Really Angelita? That is if you exist? Yes Editor, they did produce the 60,000 tonnes, but that is not the whole story, in 2023 GuySuCo harvested approximately 22,340 hectares!! But currently GuySuCo only has approximately 17,000 hectares, so how can that be?
Editor, I am not going to burden your readers with too much raw data, but these irresponsible managers of this national entity, to make this paltry 60,000 tonnes this year, reaped over 5,340 hectares of 6-month-old cane this year. In this 2023 second crop alone, they reaped 3,400 hectares of cane which was supposed to be next year’s first crop, Editor, they harvested nearly half of the 2024 first crop this year, to make that paltry 60,000 tonnes. Harvesting that much cane at 6 months instead of 12 months is an act of craziness which our fathers would never have allowed, since it was considered an act of rape. No sane analyst would believe that any management could be so irresponsible as to butcher next year’s first crop in this manner, just to deceive the public into believing that GuySuCo appears to be making progress.
Actually, this requires a commission of inquiry, since after all of the billions the Government has poured into GuySuCo since September 2020, they have nothing to show for it, and in addition they are committing acts of complete insanity, in the management of the people’s sugar industry. In the case of Rose Hall [RH], the Minister promised that it will produce 5,000 tonnes of sugar this year, it broke down and only produced 1,037 tonnes, the rest of the canes then had to be ground at Albion, since several of the boilers at RH failed. Half of the boilers failed, Editor! That’s like renovating an old abandoned car wreck, and don’t completely fix the most important part of the vehicle, the engine. I would not say that GuySuCo is in good hands.
Sincerely,
Tony Vieira
