Press Release submitted by the Barbados Sustainable Energy Cooperative Society Ltd
Colleagues
The Board and Management of ABC Ltd and BESCO Ltd are happy to announce that the 2024 sugar harvest is scheduled to commence next week.
The factory itself will be ready for operation on Monday 18 March, and the first delivery of cane is set for Wednesday 20 March. This year’s crop will be a historic one, in that key roles in the industry are now under the control of a Co-operative body (CoopEnergy Barbados) whose membership is open to all and sundry. Additionally, for the first time ever, workers in the sugar industry will own a 20% stake in the operations of the two key companies.
Trevor Browne Lt Col (Ret’d) SCM
Chairman
ABC / BESCO
114 responses to “2024 Sugar Crop”
Weeee looked but outside of a number of people who’ve given yeoman service, pun intended, to coops over decades …..
We do not see the sugar cane expertise, modern sugar technological thought, strategic plans, which back up the stated intentions.
Certainly, the old hoe and basket of molasses, raw sugar, rum, cogeneration, surely cannot be still at the cutting edge, could they?
Maybe Browne is right, just don’t have the details.
We wonder what are the orders of magnitude. For example, how many thousand of acres are under sugar cane cultivation.
Maybe 5 or 6 thousand.
Well, the country is just 100K acres. Given history, whatever was the optimum acreage must have been developed more and more over time, housing etc.
The majority community only seems to get these things when everything else the leaders have tried eventually fails.
… used to be 66,0000 acres!!
Every single year for hundreds of years without fail mechanics, engineers, managers and owners overhauled the equipment in the factory and field.
Trailer were repainted against rust and bearings were regreased or replaced.
Engines in trucks and tractors were stripped and rebuilt.
Boilers were inspected and repaired.
… and crop started in January, early February latest except when the BWU imposed its whims and fancies.
Not only have acreages been reduced in the face of politicians demanding more and more housing but so too have jobs as the demands on the industry by the BWU priced it out of the market.
Now, as predicted by Colin Hudson and others there is no way back.
It will be interesting to observe the model undertaken by CoopEnergy. The blogmaster is pleased to learn about the 20% stake in the venture by workers. Worker participation in the ownership of companies should be the way to go in the future for many reasons.
WHY IS IT THAT WE NEVER SPEAK ABOUT SLAVERY TO SIN AS DESCRIBED IN ROMANS 6
THAT IS THE REAL INCURABLE SLAVERY THAT IS THE ROOT OF ALL THAT IS GOING IN THE WORLD
It’s good to know that we are maintaining the beautiful tradition of the sugar cane plantation.
Get ready for the upcoming anniversary “400 years of Barbados (1627-2027)”!
WISH THE NEW VENTURE THE BEST OF SUCCESS
The Ides of March!
Dianne Abbot*
Is the butt of white boys troll “jokes” every election without fail
(*) Stub**
(**) On BU, a stub is a short article. When writers begin a new article, they use the word stub to mean that it is still very short and that people can add a lot more useful information to it.
I wish the new owners every success.
I was somewhat stunned to read that before producing a pound of sugar, changes made, have the new owners confident of a profitable former BAMC, even before the prior stated Renewables begin. This is a terrible indictment against the previous operators?
Given the BWA or TB or QEH may be next on the privatization list, do we know what the previous public owner received for the assets and the terms?
11:42
Because that fictitious story has no meaning, there has never been a thread of independently verifiable evidence that that socalled Pablo ever existed, and because there are fewer greater crimes which have been committed by those who fictionalized those tales, and that the fiction writers are currently conducting genocide based on the concoction of a Hamilelik.
De big deckie in yuh christian pokertzzz!
Romans 6 King James Version
6 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.
8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:
9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.
10 For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.
15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.
16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.
18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.
19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.
20 For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.
21 What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.
22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
@NO
This is Barbados. That is your answer.
“This is Barbados. That is your answer.” said the cleanup man on the worldwide web
Not in #christsname
the antithesis of Romans whatever chapter and verse was the slave trade where slaves were terrorised to be slaves to their planter masters and not slaves to righteousness
Maybe we should ask Hinckson?
https://nationnews.com/2016/12/07/hinkson-bring-the-bamc-statements/#
In fact the last I can find is 2016.
Maybe he and other MPs forgot about Reports after the’18 election?
The opposite comments from the head of BAMC Atherly and the new owners is boggleminding.
RE the antithesis of Romans whatever chapter and verse was the slave trade where slaves were terrorised to be slaves to their planter masters and not slaves to righteousness
ARE YOU THEN SAYING THAT 200 YEARS AFTER THE SLAVE TRADE AND EMANCIPATION THAT FOLK ARE STILL TO BE ENSLAVED TO ANYONE OR ANYTHING AND BE ENSLAVED TO SIN?
No I am saying you have memorised and adopted the slave masters bastardised twisted upside down inside out version of religion.
Your people from Africa had their own forms of religion and spirituality.
Planters used Christianity as a type of social control as the slaveholders remained mindful of the potential subversiveness of religion among slaves.
How sardonic!
https://www.plantationreserve.co.bb/#:~:text=Barbados%20is%20the%20only%20coral%20island%20still%20producing%20sugar%20cane&text=Barbados%20is%20the%20natural%20home,sugar%20cane%20since%20the%201600s.
RE Planters used Christianity as a type of social control as the slaveholders remained mindful of the potential subversiveness of religion among slaves.
AND WHAT HAPPENED AFTER EMANCIPATION?
YOU MEAN AFTER THIS THE SLAVES ARE ONLY ENSLAVED BY THE BIBLE
HAVE YOU NOT READ SHELLY SHERIDAN AND SHALAESPEARE.
SO WHAT ARE THE BLACK SLAVE MASTERS IN ALL BLACK LED COUNTRIES USING TO ENSLAVE THEIR PEOPLE?
CERTAINLY IN BARBADOS WHERE MOST ARE BIBLE ILLITERATES AND MANY CHURCHES ARE POORLY ATTENDED IT IS VERY CLEAR THAT NIETHER THE BLP OR DLP SLAVE MASTERS ARE USING THE BIBLE TO ENSLAVE THE MASSES
WHO ARE THE PLANTERS NOW? WHAT ARE THEY USING FOR SOCIAL CONTROL IN BARBADOS? BETZPAENIC BU BRIMBLERS AND BLOVIATORS?
WITH MORONS OF YOUR ILK NO WONDER BARBADOS IS GOING TO THE DOGS.
555dubstreet
March 17, 2024 at 1:07 pm
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Planters used Christianity as a type of social control as the slaveholders remained mindful of the potential subversiveness of religion among slaves.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Early planters (Quakers) used Christianity as a means to decide if a slave in physical bondage merited freedom. I believe that is how my slave ancestor was given freedom in 1723, long before emancipation.
A slave who accepted Christ, like any other person became free from the servitude of sin and it showed in their lives. They merited freedom from physical bondage. Becoming a Christian involved making the effort to learn to read the Gospel.
Most people take the easy road.
In 1657, about a decade after the formation of the Society of Friends, George Fox spoke of a different bondage and proclaimed that “Christ, died for ‘Tawnes’, blacks, Turks, barbarians and whites and freed all from spiritual bondage”. George Fox put into everyday language the simple Truth of God’s Word. Quakers spread it wherever they went, including to the Ottoman Empire by Mary Fisher in 1658 a year later.
A slave in physical bondage can choose to be free from spiritual bondage.
https://web.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/quakersandslavery/commentary/people/fox.php
Over a century later Olaudah Equiano, probably the most famous slave had this to say: “The word of God was sweet to my taste, yea sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. Christ was revealed to my soul as the chiefest among ten thousand,”
He was swept up in the Second Great Awakening.
He became an Evangelical Christian, a movement started by the Quakers over a century earlier. The eighteenth century saw two Great Awakenings. First the Moravians and then the Methodists came on the scene in the 1730’s in the First Great Awakening where Evangelical Christianity became acceptable.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2019/june/olaudah-equiano-slave-memoir-trade-interesting-narrative.html
The first Methodists reached the slave colony of Barbados in 1789, intent on “Christianizing” the slave population. The first Moravians came in 1765, a generation earlier, for the same purpose.
What were Quakers doing in Barbados for the previous century? Why did Barbados earn the title “The Cradle of Truth” without slaves becoming Christians? How does one Christianize someone else? Is that even possible? Isn’t it a matter of choice?
Olaudah Equiano a former slave chose to become a Christian.
From a human rights perspective reparatory justice is about rectifying and transforming systemic and structural injustices that were established by past injustices and crimes against humanity.
The Atlantic Slave Trade
The place where it started (Barbados) is the place where it ended
Barbados was the birthplace of British slave society and the most ruthlessly colonised by Britain’s ruling elites.
US Declaration of Independence was 1776
The Slavery Abolition Act was in 1833
i.e. one followed the other
Summary: The Good Guys are the Bad Guys
“Sugarcane harvesters in Chichigalpa, Nicaragua, have a life expectancy of only 46 years, with many of them dying from chronic kidney disease. Experts think they may have figured out why the workers are being afflicted at such an alarming rate. But the plantation owners have their own ideas about the root cause. Regardless of who’s right, the toll on the community has been grief and heartbreak for those suffering from the disease and for their families…”
I don’t think of Australians or Brazilians or Indians or Louisianans as slaves to claim sugar enslaved the world is rubbish.
Sugar is used in so many different products, medical, pharmaceutical, military etc etc.
It has to be as vital to life as we know it as petroleum products.
It was vital to victory in WWII.
Plantation work is exploitative for poor classes who probably get paid less than $100 p.m. all across third world estates for hard demanding punishing work and is the legacy of colonialism and slavery, whether Government or Private owned entities.
Nowadays these plantation businesses barely break even, raw product/materials is bought up by middle men, refined and processed by separate businesses and sold in open world markets by auction houses to international corporations who buy in bulk.
All the downstream businesses make far bigger profit margins than growers and bid low prices for raw product/materials.
Have some of you read what is being proposed for the industry by CoopEnergy instead of bringing sentimental and irrelevant arguments?
Of course “some” have read it and are making valid points in case you didn’t know.
It is one small step forward for raising standard of life for the poorest who are overworked and underpaid.
But, being shareholders in businesses that make smaller profit margins is a little too late.
In America new legal canabbis growers are already stopping production as they are making less.
Basically, we have been going round in circles economically since 2008: debt, debt, debt …
Do I blame our honourable government for this? Of course not. After all, the other former British pepper islands in the neighbourhood are plagued by the same problem. Diversification is impossible in the tropics with the adverse environmental conditions and in view of our scarcity of resources.
One day, our honourable government will hopefully come back to my most important proposal: A devaluation of the BBD at a ratio of 1:4 to 1:10.
We must finally be honest with ourselves: The prices of food and everyday items on our island are higher than in Tokyo or Zurich. As a globalist, I know this first hand. We can’t go on forever holding on to the irrational 1:2 exchange rate out of false national pride.
“A horrible end is better than endless horror.”
Tron, true patriot
“Do I blame our honourable government for this? Of course not. After all, the other former British pepper islands in the neighbourhood are plagued by the same problem. Diversification is impossible in the tropics with the adverse environmental conditions and in view of our scarcity of resources.”
You should read:
The Colonial Business Model = The History of Barbados*
(*) This Book is Outdated and longer in print
My error.
I had penned surprise at how before producing a pound of sugar, the outlook for profitability had shifted to good.
Not being a ‘sugar person’, I had first read a few years back, “we” were selling sugar at less than cost. Then during the recent transitional period, it was revealed this was due to a long term sales contract. The buyer wasn’t named but is easily found via Google.
Apart from the GoB covering recent losses, it seems like these sales contracts have either ended, or been terminated due to ownership change. We may also recall another ‘lopsided’ long term agreement related to molasses storage.
Hence if the new owners got a ‘clean slate’ it isn’t that difficult to forsee a profitable existence even without RE.
Exactly what assets were transferred, at what price, remains a mystery.
Source: Nation
Moving ‘with haste’ is only a solution if you know what the Hell you are doing.
There is NOTHING WORSE than a driver who CANNOT drive… and moving with haste…
https://youtu.be/72_9JLv9gq4
Source: Nation
It is most interesting how the people who ran the sugar industry into the ground for decades now have all the advice and answers for the new co-op owners.
-When to start
-How to truck
-What is best for the country
What the Hell!!!
But even more curious, is how the local Press brass seem to be guided by their every word…
Did Browne not say that he don’t give two hoots about what was done before, or when it was done, or by whom?
Shiite!!
If the new owners say they are starting when THEY decide to,
…and if they started when THEY decided to…
Who exactly determined that it was ‘late’… and on what basis?
What a place!!
There is NOTHING worse that slavery of the MIND…
It is what makes us brassy
@Bush Tea
The same thoughts when reading the article today and last week. These guys ran the industry to the ground while lining their overseas accounts and now have a lot to day because a non traditional group has decided to take the lead.
lest we forget.
@ David
One can understand the attitude of the former bosses, their reactions are completely normal and to be expected….
It is the so-called press, who seem to be so mindlessly committed to the ‘words and the wishes of Massa’… that amazes the bushman.
Do they read between the lines of the shiite that they write?
Don’t they have intelligent editors?
…or are they all brainwashed into thinking that nothing of worth can possibly come out of Nazareth… if it is of dark hue?
What a place!!!
Steupsss!!
Sir Cave Hilary, and everyone else with responsibility for Eddykashun since 1980, should be arrested – and charged with misappropriation of funds, and colluding with the enemy….
It was not so long ago that the BLP enforcer alluded on a radio show that our Black road constructors were simply not up to par. Sealy is merely echoing this perception because he knows that no one will challenge him. There is a constant narrative that black Bajans are incapable of running businesses. Never mind that Bajan white businesses owners have always been subsided by the majority black taxpayer throughout the ages.
https://nationnews.com/2017/02/03/black-history-month-from-cotton-picker-to-businessman/#