PRODUCE CLEANER SUGAR CROP!

The wheels are already in motion to ensure that Barbados receives maximum benefits from reaping a cleaner sugar crop this year.

Supervisors, harvester operators and infield tractor operators who will be heavily involved when the reaping of the sugar crop gets started – possibly as early as Monday – gathered yesterday for a workshop hosted jointly by the Barbados Sugar Industry Limited (BSIL) and the Barbados Agricultural Management Company (BAMC), at the Agronomy Research and Variety Testing Unit (ARVTU) Meeting Room in Groves, St George.

Chairman of BSIL, Patrick Bethell told The Barbados Advocate that the workshop was designed to place great emphasis on the importance of sending in clean, fresh cane to the factory, which can serve to boost sugar yields as well as quality, as opposed to sending in a mixture of canes, dirt, vines and other non-essential materials.

“We are trying to share with the harvester operators, the tractor drivers out in the field, the technical knowledge that they need, to do a more efficient job,” Bethell explained.

“You can’t make sugar from leaves, extraneous materials, dirt. What the factory is buying is basically sugar, but it’s in the form of cane. So the farmer like myself, I have to start with Dr. [Sandra] Bellamy (Unit Head of the ARVTU) and get the core varieties. I have to do the right ergonomic practices, in the right time, to produce the best quality cane I can. We have to start the crop when the canes are ripe, then the tractor operators have to deliver as clean canes as they can practically achieve to the factory, for the factory to process into particularly nowadays, direct consumption sugar, because that is where our future has to be,” the BSIL Chairman added.

“So that is what this whole exercise is about this morning, to share with the people who sit behind the wheels of the tractors, the harvesters, the people that supervise them, this is what we have got to do. We want clean sugar. The factory managers will explain what is involved [in the process]; this is what we need and seek cooperation about it. So it’s an education workshop, an educational process, because in the sugar industry, we are all in it together,” Bethell commented.

During the workshop, those gathered heard from speakers Dr. Sandra Bellamy about how to reduce harvester losses, as well as field sanitation of the harvesters; whilst Raphael O’Neal and his team from Portvale Factory explained in detail the sugar manufacturing process, with particular emphasis on the importance of sending in clean, fresh cane to the factory. (RSM)