THE ILLICIT burning of sugar cane is threatening to disrupt the 2006/07 sugar crop, with more than 50,000 tonnes destroyed at the Sugar Company of Jamaica's (SCJ) Frome division in Westmoreland. The damage has been estimated at $75 million.

Vice-president of operations at Frome, Aston Smith, said some 200 fires had occurred since the start of the sugar crop in December and stressed that the illegal act was wreaking havoc on the industry, especially in Westmoreland.

"Over the last five years, we have seen canes burned in excess of one million tonnes," he lamented.

"For the past two years, for example, we have had over 1,500 fires burning over 450,000 tonnes of cane, and when you look in terms of a cane crop producing about 600,000 tonnes of cane, when you burn 400,000 tonnes, that is approximately 75 per cent of the cane, which is burnt illicitly," he related. "This will ultimately serve to do major damage if not destroy the industry in this part of the island," he added.

New initiatives

He noted further that the money lost was "not sustainable for this type of industry."

However, Mr. Smith said several initiatives were being employed to address the problem and these included educating the populace in the area about the negative effects of these fires.

Cane farmers usually burn fields to make it easier for reaping, but Mr. Smith said this habit only leads to an over supply of sugar cane at the factories. He noted that the Frome factory required between 5,500 and 6,000 tonnes of cane per day for its operations. However, last week Friday there was 9,000 tonnes of cane on the ground. He said 6,000 tonnes of that amount was burnt illicitly.

Major problems

"When the burning is so extensive, it creates major problems at the factory, as well as for the farmers," he stated, pointing out that the more than 2,000 farmers that supply the factory stood to lose money from the stale and immature cane that were delivered to the factory.

Minister of Agriculture, Roger Clarke, recently announced that the police and the military would be brought in to monitor the cane belt of Westmoreland with a view to prosecuting persons caught lighting cane fields illicitly.

He had said aerial surveillance would be incorporated in the policing measures soon.