HOLLAND, St Elizabeth — J C Hutchinson, insisting he was expressing a personal opinion not that of the Ministry of Agriculture, said yesterday that the Frome Sugar Factory in Westmoreland could be in crisis soon because private farmers are abandoning cane production.

“I don’t want to say it but I can whisper it to you: I don’t think that they have more than two years in cane down there (Frome),” Hutchinson, who is minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries, told a local forum.

“Half of those private farmers (servicing the Frome Sugar Factory with cane) are now coming out of cane going into animals and cash crops at Frome…,” Hutchinson told guests at a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark rum company J Wray & Nephew’s $35-million spend on the Middlesex Infant School.

The school, in Hutchinson’s St Elizabeth North Western constituency, is situated close to the world-famous Holland Bamboo and the Holland Sugar Estate, which is now being vacated by J Wray and Nephew subsidiary Appleton Estate.

Asked by the Jamaica Observer to elaborate on his comments about Frome, Hutchinson made it clear he was speaking in a private capacity.

He told the Observer it was his understanding that “quite a number of persons who are private farmers (from in and around Frome) intend to come out of cane and go into cash crops and cattle…”

He identified carrots, onions, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, and Scotch bonnet pepper among the crops to which cane farmers are turning.

“My concern is that Frome will not be able to get the throughput (cane) to get the factory efficient. At this point in time I understand that they are not having what they would want to make it efficient, and if we find that more of these farmers are coming out of cane, then it is of great concern to me. Once you don’t have the throughput, you don’t have the cane to supply the factory, then you going to have a problem,” he said.

Frome, which was divested by Government in 2011, is operated by Chinese-owned Pan Caribbean. It is said to have the largest capacity of any sugar factory in Jamaica and is the second largest producer.

Hutchinson’s comments came as he spoke of plans to use the 2,400-acre Holland Estate to produce crops other than sugar cane, now that Appleton is giving up the land. Plans, he said, were moving rapidly for a range of crops at Holland Estate to supply a major agro-processing centre.

In recent weeks, Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Audley Shaw has alleged that the declining local sugar industry is being further undermined by unscrupulous operators who are using imported granulated (white) sugar officially intended for manufacturing to flood the retail trade.

Sugar producers say the alleged illegal use of imported white sugar on the local market is rendering their business uncompetitive.

Jamaica’s sugar production has declined rapidly in recent decades from a high of 514,825 tonnes in 1965 to 83,000 tonnes in the recently completed sugar crop. Shaw said recently that the industry still employs 35,000 Jamaicans.

— Garfield Myers