A.S.R./B.S.I. Concerned About Cabinet Decision to Mill Excess Sugarcane

The ongoing situation involving Santander, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the milling of excess sugarcane from the north has prompted A.S.R./B.S.I. to come forward and share its position on government’s decision.  As we’ve reported, Cabinet has authorized the delivery of fifty thousand tons of sugarcane from farmers in Orange Walk and Corozal to be milled by Santander.  According to a cabinet brief dated April twenty-second, milling the stand-over sugarcane will allow farmers to generate additional income.  This morning, Vice President of International Relations, Mac McLachlan, spoke on behalf of A.S.R./B.S.I.

Mac McLachlan

Mac McLachlan, VP, International Relations, A.S.R./B.S.I.

“We respect the cane farmers, we respect the investments they’ve made and that’s why I am scratching my head a bit to wonder why there is such a drive to get cane farmers to take their cane a hundred and forty kilometers to the west at a great cost to them, rather than to bring that cane to B.S.I.  I believe that the cabinet decision was taken for the right reasons but with the wrong information and I think what’s happened is that the due process was not followed that should have been followed.  We were not consulted about this decision which seems to be very odd because we are the mill.  With all due respect, the minister is not a mill engineer or a technical expert who knows about milling and what the mill can achieve and all of these things.  And so it was quite a shock.  There’s a very well established procedure on how something like this should happen and the underlying problem with this whole issue is the lack of management information.  We don’t sit still and just accept these overestimations.  B.S.I. has been looking at the cane from before the start of the crop and doing our own estimations which are based on scientifically adopted ways of looking at cane yields and what that’s likely to produce for the crop.”