Caribbean's bittersweet new reality

Robert Clarke, the gray-haired managing director of Worthy Park Estate, one of Jamaica's most productive sugar plantations and factories, looks out from the mill over his 9,000 acres of sugar cane in the valley and frowns.

It's a hot, late afternoon and workers in blue overalls are cutting and transporting the last canes of the day to the factory. Here, other workers in hard hats water, grind, heat, and cool the cane as it makes its way down conveyor belts, in and out of vats, and through temperature-controlled pipes - finally spilling out the other end as raw brown sugar.

Clarke scoops up a handful of granules. His family has owned and run this plantation since 1918, buying cane from some 2,000 local farmers as well as directly employing 700 others. Clarke loves the place. "But it's over," he says with a shrug, "... this is all about to come to a grinding halt."

Last month, in response to pressure from the World Trade Organization, the European Union (EU) adopted reforms of the sugar subsidy system, which has, for years, artificially kept prices three times higher than world market levels. As a consequence, it seems Jamaica, along with most other sugar-producing Caribbean nations, may soon have to do without what has long been their economic life's blood and the very reason they came into existence as colonies.

Sugarcane cultivation was introduced to Jamaica by the Spanish in 1520, but really prospered under British colonial rule, as Europe developed a taste for the sweetener to go along with the tea coming from China. By the 18th century, Jamaica was one of the world's biggest sugar producers.

While the industry went into a decline after slavery was abolished here in 1838, it still accounts for 36 percent of the country's agricultural exports, bringing in $75 million a year, and employing 38,000 people directly, and over 100,000 all together, almost all in rural areas, according to the Planning Institute of Jamaica.

The EU reform, which comes into force July 1, will see the guaranteed price for sugar cut by 36 percent over four years, and markets opened to imports from the world's poorest countries.

At present, the price paid for a ton of unrefined brown sugar is $630 dollars. By the end of 2010, the set price is expected to be $402.87.

"The margin will be too low, the price paid to cutters will be too low, and no one will work," says Karl James, general manager of Jamaica Cane Products Sales Limited, the body that collectively markets Jamaican sugar. "It will cripple our industry."

Rural Jamaicans, already among the poorest in the country, warns Clarke, will lose their income base and drift to the cities and tourist areas - where, without work or opportunities, crime will beckon.

At present, Jamaica has one of the highest per capita crime and murder rates in the world. Other farmers, suggests Clarke, will be tempted to turn to cultivating marijuana, an illicit crop already widely grown here.

"There is always a feeling in Jamaica that everything will be OK - but it won't be OK," he says. "We feel a sense of betrayal. What the Europeans are doing to us is immoral - they are killing us. It's a death sentence."

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders have assessed that next year alone the sugar-producing countries stand to lose about $100 million. The largest regional producer, Guyana, where sugar exports account for almost 20 percent of its GDP, and income from tourism is far less than in other CARICOM countries, will be hardest hit, and stands to lose $40 million a year as a result of the reforms.

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