BSCFA says improved price per ton of cane as a result of quality investment by farmers

Javier Keme

According to BSCFA executive, they have received a record breaking seventy-four dollars and twenty cents per ton of cane delivered to B.S.I.  But the price of cane is not linked to the economic benefits from bagasse. The executive says that the improved price per ton of cane is a result of the efforts by cane farmers to invest and secure a high quality of cane.

Javier Keme, Chairman, Finance Committee, BSCFA

“The increase was not because of outside adjustment of prices. It was within our efforts as farmers from bringing the tons of sugar that we extracted from a ton of cane; that we proved that ratio to a degree that that could be mathematically extracted that from twelve tons of cane that we needed before 2009 to eight point three—that was the first year that we instituted the quality program. And that quality program is not funded by B.S.I.  It is funded by the producers, by the cane farmers. We’ve spent within the program over a million dollars within the program as an organization. Apart from that, we have other cost that independent farmers go; paying the extra fifty cents of the extra dollar to the cutters to the workers for them to do a better job—to cut a cleaner cane and you know these are the things.”

Oscar Alfonso, C.E.O., Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association

“We have been deprived of revenue. And what Mister Keme has been saying that all these increase in the price has been due mainly to the efforts that the farmers have been making in improving cane quality.”

According to BSCFA, they are only asking for ten dollars per ton of sugar cane with respect to the revenue sharing on the bagasse.