Yesterdays’s expected start of the sugar cane harvest was pushed back due to a delay in the certification of the weighbridge at Portvale Factory.
Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Indar Weir said: “The weighbridge is used to get the correct weights when the bins or trailers come in. That area has to be certified by someone. Unfortunately, this gentleman is perhaps one of the only ones we have here, and when he was asked to go and do the certification, he said he can only do it today (yesterday).
“So that is the reason why it was done today (yesterday) and completed. The crop will start tomorrow (today), rather than today (yesterday), because you don’t want to have canes cut and they can’t go on the bridge.”
When a DAILY NATION team visited the plant there was little activity and the furnace was not lit.
This year’s sugar harvest marks the second under the Sustainable Energy Co-operative Society Limited (CoopEnergy), which took over from the Barbados Agriculture Management Company (BAMC), Agricultural Business Company Ltd. (ABC) and the Barbados Energy and Sugar Company Inc. (BESC) Last year’s
harvest, like previous ones, also faced a delay much to the lament of some private farmers who criticised the tardiness of trucks in collecting canes from the Portvale Factory as well as the late March 25 start.
Weir mentioned that the start of the crop was determined by the readiness of the factory and the sugar canes, adding that aside from last year, when they were in the midst of the sugar industry transition, they were aiming for earlier starts to the season.
