CLARKS TOWN, Trelawny – Cane farmer Delroy Anderson is hopeful. He has seen the contribution that the sugar industry has made to Trelawny’s economy, especially in the Clarks Town area.

During the more than 40 years that Anderson has been a large-scale sugar cane grower, he has also seen the crop decline and the resulting fall-off in the parish’s sugar production.

Now, he is fully aware of the implications of the proposed 39 per cent cut in the price that the European Union (EU) pays to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

But despite the odds, Anderson remains confident that sugar production can increase significantly and the sector can continue to support the economic development of Clarks Town and nearby communities.

“We are hopeful right now that the crop can rebound,” he told the Sunday Observer. “I have seen the best of sugar and I know it can come back.”

The chairman of the Long Pond/Vale Royal Cane Farmers’ Association can remember when the Long Pond Sugar factory was producing more than 20,000 tonnes of sugar a year. And he can also remember the thousands of people in and around Clarks Town who made a living out of sugar.

Clarks Town, home to the Long Pond factory, is surrounded by acres and acres of sugar cane. Located 13 miles south-east of Falmouth, Trelawny’s capital, the community consists of high and primary schools, a police station, a commercial bank, health clinics, a market, several churches, grocery stores and bars.

Up to 10 years ago, it was bustling with commercial activity – as much as any small, rural community can.

These days, some of the businesses have reported a marked decline in sales due to declining income generated from the sugar sector.

Not too far from Clarks Town are a number of small, sugar cane-growing communities including Jackson Town, Kinloss, Spicy Hill, Daniel Town and Samuel Prospect.

Like many rural communities where sugar is king, life in Clarks Town is tightly interwoven with the Long Pond factory, a subsidiary of the Sugar Company of Jamaica. It is estimated that at least 40 per cent of the working population in Clarks Town and adjoining communities are employed in the parish’s sugar industry.

According to industry officials, more than 800 persons are directly employed by the Long Pond Estate during the crop season, which usually lasts for five months. Industry players estimate that sugar pumps about $30 million into Clarks Town’s economy every month and this has contributed significantly to the development of the area.

“The sugar sector employs more people here than anything else,” said Laura Glaze, the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union officer for the Long Pond area.

She added that over the past 50 years, the Long Pond Clinic, for example, has provided health care for thousands of employees and their beneficiaries. The clinic has now been scaled down because of financial constraints and has stopped dispensing drugs, Glaze said, but its other services are still available and greatly appreciated.

The union delegate said that Long Pond has also, in the past, contributed to the development of sports by making contributions to a number of teams in the parish.

Residents said, too, that the company was also integrally involved in the training of hundreds of students at the processing plant, and also taught them skills such as welding and how to become auto mechanics.

The sugar estate has also contributed to the parish’s traditional educational system via financial support for the Cedric Titus High School in Clarks Town, which was named in honour of a former president of the All Island Jamaica Cane Farmers’ Association.

“The estate has also, in the past, made lands available for the development of a housing scheme in Clarks Town and for Expand-a-Village projects,” Royland Barrett, a former chairman of the Long Pond Sugar Company told the Sunday Observer.

Businessman Bevon Barnett, co-owner of V-Barnett Enterprise in Clarks Town, said that despite the decline in the sector, the sugar industry has helped him stay in business.

“Sugar industry workers provide our main support right now, so if that should go down, the town would become a ghost town,” said Barnett who runs a skating rink, supermarket, bar and games room.

More than 80 per cent of his sales, he said, is derived from persons employed in the sector.

Brenton Gabbay, another Clarks Town businessman, also says the major chunk of his business comes from sugar workers.

“It’s the industry that runs the place. Ninety-five per cent of my sales come from the people that are involved in the sugar industry,” he said.

He added, however, that over the past few years there has been a steady decline in the levels of income generated from the sector.

“It is sugar cane that build this town and we can’t do without it,” an elderly Clarks Town businessman said.

Anderson, the chairman of the Long Pond/Vale Royal Cane Farmers’ Association, agreed.

“This crop is the only one that grows successfully here, and if we should cease the cultivation of the crop what will happen to the communities that depend sugar?” he asked. “They would become ghost towns.”

Anderson pointed to the dramatic change in the communities surrounding the Hampden sugar factory in Trelawny after the poorly performing estate was closed by the government three years ago. More than 400 of the estate’s employees were axed after the sugar processing plant was closed.

Since Hampden’s closure, businesses that once depended heavily on the patronage of workers employed in the sugar industry have reported a fall-off in sales.

Anderson believes that with good management and the production of by-products of sugar cane, the sector can become viable again.

“We need to start making things like ethanol and refined sugar,” he said.