Ian McDonald
IT IS beyond reasonable comprehension why sugar continues to be looked upon by some as an industry from the past which needs to be replaced by some new, unidentified, crop or crops which would somehow do better and/or contribute more to the economy.
This misguided view stems from a jaundiced and outdated mindset about the role, contribution and potential of the sugar industry in the world today. Misconceptions about sugar based on inherited prejudice, unexamined hearsay or sheer lack of factual knowledge are legion.
Such ingrained impressions are hard to eradicate and resist repeated efforts to correct them. However, the effort to get the sugar industry into the right perspective must not cease since it is too important in the economy and society to be given less than its due. Let me therefore examine more closely the impression that sugar is a 'sunset' industry.
DYNAMIC, GROWTH INDUSTRY
Worldwide it is a dynamic, growth industry with consumption of sugar, especially in Asia, rising rapidly, production increasing to match demand and cogeneration and ethanol production racing ahead. Sugar cane is increasingly seen as a fuel crop in an age of oil depletion. Scores of countries around the world are working assiduously to start up or expand sugar industries as being the best possible agricultural crop and rural industry there is. So why the negativity here?
Foreign exchange earnings from sugar amount to US$120 million annually and this does not include the earnings of the important rum industry which is a sugar offshoot. This represents a massive contribution in a relatively small economy. What is more, the industry's factories are fuelled by a by-product, bagasse, representing major savings in foreign exchange.
Even those who understand quite a lot about the vital role and contribution of sugar make the mistake of thinking of sugar as an industry which resists change and neglects new opportunities. The theme of the need for 'diversification,' that mindless mantra, is replayed by a hundred commentators when in fact, in front of their sightless eyes, the sugar industry has done, and is doing, more diversification than anyone else in the economy.
GREAT POTENTIAL
But the potential of the sugar-cane industry is greater than the diversification already under way. What we are seeing is the rapid development of a close connection between oil and sugar. Interest in, and demand for, sugar cane as a fuel in the form of ethanol is advancing by leaps and bounds.
Ethanol is likely to play a major role soon in energy calculations. The world market for ethanol has grown from 28 million litres in 2000 to 50 million litres in 2005 and is leaping upwards. Ethanol can be supplied from much less dangerous and more secure locations than the tinder-box Middle East. Ethanol is infinitely kinder to the environment than gasolene. There are moves in the European Union to increase the proportion of ethanol in petrol from five to 10 per cent which will generate a surge of new demand.
When people in Guyana and the wider Caribbean talk of getting out of sugar, do they realise they are saying we should not only neglect the good thing we already have but also that we should be getting out of the fuel business?
Ian McDonald is an occasional writer who lives and works in Georgetown, Guyana.
