Edward Seaga, Contributor
HISTORICALLY, JAMAICANS have a sweet tooth. In bygone days, sugar and water was a standard part of the daily diet of the poor. Those who had limes or Seville oranges would add a welcome fruit flavour.
Today, all kinds of fruit flavours are added and all kinds of brand names are marketed but it is still the same old sugar and water so loved by the poor.
Both sugar and water are now featuring heavily in the parish of St. Catherine where the sugar industry is beginning its long drawn out process of shutting down of the Bernard Lodge Estate as announced by Prime Minister P.J. Patterson. Likewise, the Bog Walk gorge, through which the Rio Cobre flows, may also be closed.
NO SURPRISE
This announcement should come as no surprise. Sugar has been winding its way down on the five Government-owned sugar estates for many years, coming from a peak of 500,000 tonnes national production in 1965 and declining steadily to 124,000 tonnes last year.
On the two privately-owned-and-operated estates, the opposite has been true. Great technological advances have been introduced using Australian technology, certainly on New Yarmouth and Appleton.
The result has been a reduction in the cost of sugar to less than US 20 cents per lb. on the private estates compared to more than US 24 cents per pound on the estates owned by Government, which have been left dangling in the backwaters without any technological advances. The long-delayed attempt to introduce on the publicly-owned estates the high technology, computer-driven, centre-pivot irrigation equipment, capable of enormous reach with 80 per cent of the water going to the roots of the plants, used by Australia, ended up with the wrong machines ordered and poor results.
JAMAICA CANNOT COMPETE
On our scale of operation involving several relatively small-scattered sugar estates compared to the vast spreads of Australia, Thailand and Brazil, Jamaica cannot compete. The economy of scale would make Jamaican operations largely non-competitive. There are exceptions, of course, as earlier pointed out.
The question being asked is what crops would replace sugar cane cultivation and sugar production on those estates to be closed.
There are derivatives that could make good substitutes. Two, in particular, recommend themselves, ethanol and organically-grown crops, including sugar derivatives.
Ethanol production was introduced in Jamaica in the late 1980s as an Agro 21 project. In those days, there was great difficulty in securing a sizeable market share for Jamaican exports to the American market because of the objection of ethanol producers in the American midwest who used corn and other grains as feedstock. The objection was to the ethanol mix Jamaica produced using Spanish grapes and Brazilian citrus as feedstocks. The contention was that these two products were not Jamaican.
Currently, there is much greater tolerance for using imported feedstock to add to local cane juice because of the hunger of the United States for products to replace oil. In fact, the quota for U.S. imports from the Caribbean is so large, it has not been filled. So there is plenty of room for the production of ethanol locally for the domestic market to, firstly, produce a US$20 million annual chemical additive for gasolene now imported, and then for export.
The market, domestic and foreign, is there. What remains is to check the cost of cane production for ethanol.
It so happens that in the previous project which was launched in the late 1980s, and operated by the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, Bernard Lodge was the site. So it appears that with the closure of Bernard Lodge, something is now afoot to revive an industry abandoned by Government some 15 years ago.
If the tests show that cane can be grown at feasible costs for an ethanol industry, the concerns about shutting down certain operations would be diminished because the production of sugar cane would still be required as an ethanol feedstock.
Flood waters in the Bog Walk gorge, through which the Rio Cobre flows, have always been a problem. One thing is certain. Whenever there are heavy rains, the road through Bog Walk gorge will be closed, sometimes for prolonged periods. This is because of both landslides and the overflow of the Rio Cobre.
Once again, that is the present situation from recent flood rains. This time, an exasperated Minister of Works, Bobby Pickersgill, proposes to close the road, dam the gorge and route all vehicles through Sligoville.
Looking at this three-part whammy, Sligoville as an alternative must be ruled out. Think of the World Cup crowd coming over the fearful Mount Diablo in a caravan of vehicles several miles long and then having to tackle the forbidding Sligoville mountain pass as well. The overseas press would not be amused. Neither World Cup spectators. Jamaican travellers, especially, who have to face these two formidable mountain passes on every trip between Kingston and Ocho Rios, would become exasperated and rebellious.
Closing the Bog Walk gorge may be inevitable, but not until the planned link from Highway 2000 at Bushy Park has been constructed to connect Kingston to Ocho Rios by a much easier route.
Can the gorge be damned to provide storage for the flow of the Rio Cobre? The geological composition of the gorge would not provide the level of retention for storage. The rock material is too permeable. There is a much better prospect for dealing with the Rio Cobre to bring its flood waters under control, which now flow uselessly to the sea. This excess can flow to productive use.
WATER SHORTAGE
In St. Catherine, there has been a pronounced shortage of water for domestic use and irrigation over the years. Twelve thousand acres of land in the parish require irrigation and 200,000 residents need better supply. The pressing needs are for domestic and agricultural supply.
A plan was developed in the 1980s largely by an Agro 21 team to construct a mega reservoir to the south of Spanish Town. The 500-acre site would hold up to 40 million cubic metres of water and would be far larger than the Mona reservoir.
Water would be supplied from the Rio Cobre by trapping the flood surplus which now flows to the sea. The inflow to the reservoir and outflow for distribution would be gravity fed, requiring no power supply. Indeed, it would produce two megawatts of power.
I could write extensively on this project from documents I have, but for the purpose of this presentation, what is needed is only to confirm that the mega reservoir is a superior alternative to constructing a dam in the gorge.
In the 12,000 acres of land which could be irrigated lies the answer to a number of other problems:
Replacement of jobs and farming opportunities for displaced sugar workers and others in the construction of the huge reservoir and farming the now-irrigated land;
Two megawatts of additional electricity for the national power grid;
Provision of land for replacement crops in sugar and other agricultural products.
In a job-starved location like Spanish Town, to which would now be added thousands of unemployed workers/farmers who were dependent on Bernard Lodge, the giant reservoir would not only be the answer but an opportunity to create a farming future with more solid prospects.
Apart from ethanol production, there are other attractive possibilities. Organic farming today is one of the fastest-growing areas of agriculture. What is more, organically-grown products command higher prices yielding better price mark-ups. This fits the cost of production profile of the Jamaican farmer.
Some of the products now being grown organically include sugar cane on relatively small properties to produce specialty sugar products now being produced in South America golden light sugar, extra light sugar and kosher sugar.
Organic crops include many types of vegetables which are cultivated organically in many parts of the world and enjoy strong markets. Certain fruits are also being organically produced.
In short, the possibilities could be very positive if a vision exists for an alternative to sugar based on converting the St. Catherine plains into well-irrigated farms for cane (to convert to ethanol), vegetables, fruits and aquaculture.
Organic cultivation on a large scale would require natural fertiliser. The quality required might be a limitation. This could be overcome by growing lucaeana to provide organic fertiliser since this tree fixes nitrogen from its roots in the soil. It also provides annual feed from its leaves and the animals in turn provide organic fertiliser.
The centrepiece of this parish wide development would then be the construction of the mega reservoir which would provide the development impetus for the entire parish.
That was the vision of the Agro 21 programme which I approved as Prime Minister. With the change of government, it was never undertaken. Perhaps the time is now.
Edward Seaga is a former prime minister. He is now a Distinguished Fellow at the University of the West Indies. Email: odf@uwimona.edu.jm.
