GRANGE HILL, Westmoreland – In the days when sugar was undisputed king, cane farmer Lucius Jackson prospered. At the height of his prosperity, Jackson had almost 300 acres of sugar cane under cultivation, producing between 3,000 and 3,900 tonnes of cane, making him one of the most influential businessmen in Westmoreland.

In addition to growing sugar cane, Jackson was heavily involved in the haulage of the crop to the Frome sugar factory.

Jackson employed more than 50 persons and owned several tractors, articulated trailers, 14 carts, trucks and two cane loaders.

But these days Jackson is a worried man.

The industry is fast declining and he is fearful that if the slide continues, the cultivation of sugar cane in Westmoreland and neighbouring Hanover could become extinct and make him bankrupt.

“The industry is the worst I have ever seen it. It was bad in the late 90s but now it has gotten worse. I don’t know what is going to happen,” said Jackson.

But there are more worries on the horizon. The decline in the sector, he says, comes at a time when the country is faced with a phased 39 per cent cut in the price for sugar sold to the European Union.

Before that World Trade Organisation-inspired decision, Jamaica enjoyed preferential treatment for its sugar exports to Europe under the old Lomé trade and aid pact binding Europe and its former colonies in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions.

That proposed price cut, Jackson frets, could drive him and hundreds of other cane farmers in the parishes out of the industry.

“We are already in deep trouble and so if the cut is implemented we won’t be able to survive,” he says.

Jackson is just one of the many cane farmers in the sugar belt parish of Westmoreland who have reported huge losses and have dramatically scaled down operations.

Vice chairman of the West End Cane Farmers Association, Alti Lewis tells the Sunday Observer that in the 1970s there were more than 6,000 cane farmers in the parishes of Westmoreland and Hanover, supplying canes to the Frome sugar factory.

But since that time, roughly 4,000 farmers have given up sugar cane cultivation. Others, he notes, have opted to reduce the size of their farms.

Lewis, himself a cane farmer for more than 40 years, points out that up to the 1980s he was cultivating roughly 350 acres (142 hectares) of cane and supplied more than 8,000 tonnes of the crop to the factory.

At the end of the 2004/2005 crop, his production had been reduced to a little over 100 tonnes.

“The remuneration was not there; the factory had problems in taking off the crops and the cost of inputs are just too high,” said Lewis.

In addition, he argues, the estate has been mismanaged by the state-run Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ), a claim some industry officials including chairman of the All-Island Jamaica Cane Farmers Association chairman, Allan Rickards, have repeated.

In fact, Rickards last month called for the dismissal of the management of the SCJ, arguing that the deterioration of the sector over the years was a result of years of gross neglect.

But the SCJ’s board last week expressed confidence in the managers of the company.

Jackson also blames several factors including what he terms the harsh debt repayment policy instituted by the industry lenders, for his troubles.

His fortune, he says, began to take a nose-dive about five years ago. From the just under 4,000 acres, his land under production has been reduced to a mere 50 acres. Over the last three years, Jackson has lost more than $3 million in revenues, he says.

And he no longer has a fleet of cane loaders, carts, tractors and trucks.

“In the days when sugar was king, everybody was nice. But now things bad,” said the cane farmer.

He recalls that as a young mechanic in the 1960s, he had started the cultivation of cane on a two-acre plot in the Grange Hill area. Within a few years, he had raised enough money through savings and loans from various institutions to purchase, and in some cases to lease properties to grow sugar cane.

By the turn of the 1980s, Jackson had become one of the leading businessmen in Westmoreland. Those days are now a bittersweet memory.

“I was living quite comfortably out of it (sugar industry). I was able to pay my taxes, workers and maintain my equipment,” Jackson reminisces.

“But, all that is in the past.”

cummingsm@jamaicaobserver.com