Saved at the last minute after two months of conflict (and therefore so much delay), the sugar campaign in mainland Guadeloupe will finally be able to take place. Faced with the threat of a blank year and a blockage for several days in the main economic zone of the archipelago, an agreement was signed on Friday April 27: 2 million euros were released, including 1.5 million euros paid by the State, the region and the department. And the promise extracted by the public authorities to finally open the sites of an overhaul of the sector which, at the last count in 2018, had 10,000 direct jobs.
For several years, each start of the sugar cane harvest has brought its share of blockages, demonstrations by farmers, transporters, or cane cutters, a sign of the permanent crisis which is driving this moribund sector.
“It’s passion that pushes us not to stop”, affirmed the members of the Farmers’ Collective (KDA), stationed in front of Gardel, the sugar factory, while they protested against the purchase price of cane by the industrialist, at the beginning of March. This sector, inherited from slavery, is supported by public money which benefits, according to the Department of Food, Agriculture and Forestry, from “very significant public support (national and European aid) » : 80% of the cane producer’s revenue depends on this aid, and the entire industry is supported in order to be competitive on the markets.
Sugar content of the plant
According to data from this state service, in 2010, mainland Guadeloupe had 2,779 planters. Ten years later, there were only 1,967 and the number continues to decline. Over this period, 28% of its farms disappeared and 13% of the agricultural area cultivated with cane (around 11,000 hectares today) was wiped out.
Sugar production decreases each year, due to yields per hectare (45 tonnes per hectare on average compared to 60 to 80 expected), climate change, land pressure, the age pyramid of farmers and also the saccharine wealth, constantly decreasing, at the heart of regular conflicts around the price of cane.
Because it is in particular the sugar content of the plant which determines the purchase price per tonne, paid by the factory and fixed by a multi-annual framework document, signed by the players in the sector and by its financiers.
In 2023, the date of renewal of this agreement, the price was set after a long social conflict, at a maximum of 113 euros per tonne of cane (instead of 84 euros for the previous agreement which ran from 2017 to 2022). The document remained open on a certain number of areas, whether it was the reorganization of the sector or the possibility of revising the saccharimetric formula used to set the price of a tonne of cane. Established in 1983, this formula is regularly called into question, not so much in its method as in the parameters used: sugar content in the cane, fiber content, extraction capacity coefficient of the factory, etc.
You have 27.8% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.