An Introduction to the Sugar Industry Management Information System

The Sugar Cane Production Committee has admitted that it is tough to police transactions between farmers of sugar cane and non-farmers. A recent case is the Eloy Escalante affair, where the cane farmer left the industry three years ago and sold his production estimate or quota to the son of a Government Minister. That person tried to have the parcel transferred in his name but the Committee only approved an administrator grant. The discovery of the deal in a Fairtrade audit cost the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association its Fairtrade membership when it was suspended a few weeks ago. To avoid a repeat, the S.C.P.C., with the support of the cane farmers’ associations and B.S.I./A.S.R., are planning a cane census, which under law is due every three years and will help to clean up the standing farmers’ registry. But on a day-to-day basis, both B.S.I. and the Government authorities are using a new, GIS-based system to keep track of who is planting and reaping cane down to the parcel in the Northern District. News Five toured the facility on the Tower Hill compound of B.S.I. on Monday and spoke to coordinator of the Sugar Industry Management Information System, Jessamyn Ramos about the benefits for cañeros.

Jessamyn Ramos

Jessamyn Ramos, Coordinator, SIMIS

“This tool serves for them as a record-keeping tool, where they can now start to track the exact acreage that they are producing sugar cane; what variety they are producing it in, what’s the soil type they are producing in, and at the end, with the yield, they can calculate which are the parcels which are not yielding well for them, and do better decisions, make informed better decisions in terms of they would want to replant the field; if the particular variety is not suitable for that sort of soil. Sugar industry stakeholders see the bigger picture, which is the benefit in terms of seeing, for example, what type of sugar cane varieties we have out there; and for now, I can tell you that our first initial survey has showed us that we have one particular variety with over sixty-seven percent, which is not too healthy for the industry. But what we would now want to do with this program is to monitor the yield, and to know where are those varieties that are not producing, as expected.”

Training of farmers in use of the system will continue for at least the month of December.