MARK BROOKS of Richmond Park sugar estate has in recent years been waging a virtual one-man war, trying to convince anyone who would listen that Jamaican sugar cane and several other plants are badly afflicted with soil-borne diseases.
On Wednesday, he finally had the attention of an audience where it mattered, Parliament's Economy and Production Committee, but he seemed to have so far enjoyed little success in winning converts to his cause.
In a "show and tell" presentation replete with references from several local and international studies, plus photographs of sugar cane samples in different parts of Jamaica and the world, Mr. Brooks repeated his longstanding charge that the major problem affecting Jamaican sugar cane was the yield decline precipitated by soil-borne diseases.
In addition to evidence of lower yields and dying cane plants on several estates, he produced photographic evidence that unlike cane in some other parts of the world, local cane plants do not have strong roots that constitute up to 30% of the total plant mass, and that our cane plants do not grow in uniform dimensions.
Agricultural Minister Roger Clarke appeared less than impressed by all this, indicating that even if Jamaican soil was replete with growth-inhibiting organisms, he believed the problem was not as serious as Mr. Brooks portrayed it, and that its impact could be negated by more efficient agronomic practices. Mr Clarke also asked how come estates like Appleton and Worthy Park had been able to increase production in recent years, if there was supposed to be such a critical problem with local soil.
Senator Peter McConnell of Worthy Park estate was also sceptical of Mr. Brooks' charges of soil diseases, pointing out that Worthy Park has had no decrease in yields in recent years. Mr. McConnell charged that the yield and productivity problems being experienced by other estates could be addressed by better irrigation and fertilisation techniques as well as rotating different varieties of cane.
Speaking to The Gleaner after the adjournment of the committee's sitting, Mr. Brooks said that although superior efficiency had enabled Worthy Park to do better than the rest of the industry, it too suffers from the yield-inhibiting disease, and would have been producing even more otherwise.
