"GIVE US this day our daily bread" has long outgrown its Biblical source in The Lord's Prayer to mean much more than spiritual solace sought through divine petition.
We do not think it would be sacrilegious to suggest that "the bread" is more than the material sustenance the baking industry, for example, is now worried about. Indeed they are not so worried about the wheat we do not grow to make flour, but about the sugar we ought to make from the cane that we used to grow in more than adequate quantity.
In short, the precipitous decline in the sugar industry that used to be a mainstay of the economy for centuries is what now threatens our daily bread. It bears repeating that the decline now forces the importation of brown sugar in the classic "coals-to-Newcastle" syndrome. That situation becomes necessary whenever production falls below the 288,000 tonnes which first has to satisfy quota requirements, principally for the European and US markets.
Granulated, or white sugar, is also imported since the plans to revive and update existing but antiquated refinery facilities are still to be implemented.
Faced with the shortage of brown sugar, bakers in the industry say they are forced to use the granulated variety which more than doubles operational costs; which ultimately impact on consumers of baked products.
It is not surprising that, even as the bakers bawled, bureaucratic humbug delayed the clearance of some 2,800 tonnes of the brown sugar which they say has been held up at the port in Kingston since September 6.
When that hurdle is cleared we would hope that the consequential price hikes to the consumer from the sugar factor and other incidentals would not stay put. But that, we suspect, would take further resort to divine petition. So let us pray.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
