Sugar’s co-op owners near historic sugar harvest start

By Sheria Brathwaite

The cooperative movement now in charge of sugar production has announced that the 2024 sugarcane harvest is likely to begin “in another week”.

In a brief interview with Barbados TODAY on Monday, Lieutenant Colonel Trevor Browne, the head of the Barbados Sustainable Energy Co-operative Society Limited (Co-op Energy), said the other private growers group, Barbados Sugar Industry Limited (BSIL), will soon be notified about the proposed date for the start of the harvest season.

He said: “When we are ready to start, we will make an announcement to the planters. We will start the crop when everything is ready and I expect it to start in another week or so. The thing is to make sure we have everything in the [Portvale] factory in place so that when we start the factory it will keep on [running] for as long as possible [as] it is an old factory and that is more important than if we start Monday or Tuesday and so on.”

His announcement comes exactly two weeks after BSIL farmers said they stand ready to get on with the start of the harvest. The farmers said their preparations were going well and were awaiting word about the start date which was originally projected to be in February.

This year’s harvest will be historic as it will be the first time the cooperative movement, and by extension the workers – descendants of the majority population of enslaved Africans brought here to grow, cut and mill sugar cane since the 1630s – now dictate the operations of the sugar industry.

In January, Co-op Energy took over the operations of the state-owned Barbados Agricultural Management Company (BAMC), creating two new co-operative-owned firms – the Agricultural Business Company Ltd. (ABC) and Barbados Energy and Sugar Company Inc. (BESC).

These companies have taken over the BAMC’s sugarcane growing and milling business and are responsible for the production of sugar, its by-products, the sale of sugar, the operations of the Portvale mill and its generation of electric power into the national grid.

Under the co-op leadership, about1 100 workers and former BAMC employees own a 20 per cent stake in the companies.

sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb