CENTURIES OF lurching from crisis to crisis in ever-shortening cycles should by now lead to the conclusion that the sugar industry as we have known it cannot much longer survive. The moot question therefore is what alternatives are available to at least partially replace sugar?
We refuse to believe that most of the prime agricultural lands in this country can produce nothing of economic value except sugar. And we think that it is on this latter aspect that the technical study of the future of the industry should concentrate.
And perhaps more than all: the question of subsistence employment in the industry cannot be the central consideration, for that is more an index of its backwardness than of its dynamics.
Judging from what the Prime Minister is reported to have said after Thursday's Jamaica House meeting on the fate of the industry, a modified future is contemplated. Mr. Patterson said that "every effort must be made to ensure the creation of an industry that is productive, competitive and technically adjusted while at the same time engaging a work force that was efficient and fairly enumerated."
If the work plan to be submitted to a Cabinet sub-committee later this month follows those guidelines the industry will have to be radically changed. Hence the importance of all the contributing sectors having an input in the decision-making that must change the face of an industry on the brink.
The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.
