Will Sugar Roads Ever Be Fixed?

Jose Novelo

The deplorable conditions of sugar roads remain an issue for caneros in the north.   Every season they experience major setbacks during the course of extracting cane from their farms.  Despite government’s promise to assist with grading and drainage, the economic impact of poorly kept roads is felt across the industry.  At the end of the crop, trucks are pretty banged up and excess cane is often left in the fields.  According to Jose Novelo, chair of the Sugar Cane Production Committee, a program is being established to help with the necessary infrastructure works.

Jose Novelo, Chair, Sugar Cane Production Committee

“We do have a plan along with the Ministry of Works and the Ministry of Agriculture to put a plan in place given that we are hopeful that we are going to get some equipment under this EMS program and that equipment is supposed to be dedicated to the northern part of the country.  It will be used primarily to ensure that there’s proper rehabilitation of roads so that we don’t have the problems that we normally have.  Admittedly, you know as well as most of us that we have a huge quantity of roads and so we have to put a plan in place to ensure that we can deal with all of them with time.  Obviously it cannot be done in just say, one season. Traditionally, what is done is that when the season is starting it is normally wet, farmers would normally try to harvest from their fields in high ground and when it is drying up that’s when they are getting into the lower areas.  What happened this year though is that because we’ve had more rains than usual during the crop, quite a bit of cane still remained in the low areas and it’s just difficult to deal with that unless there is a major program which the Ministry of Agriculture is looking at that has to do with drainage.  Drainage is very, very important in the scheme of things because it will help not only with the harvest delivery but roads.  It will help a lot with the road conditions which as you very well know, is always an issue when we are about to start crop because they are not in tiptop condition.”

A date for the commencement of that project is yet to be determined.