Lara does not want to repeat the Yaracuy sugar central bankruptcies

They fear a domino effect that may put an end to sugar

The term set by the government to evaluate the intervention of the sugar fields near Barquisimeto will expire around the middle of this month. Whatever happens, the owners insist that there is a lot at stake: more than 10% of the sugar production of a country with a sugar shortage.

An old controversy has been rekindled in the city of dusks. Armed with camps and military reserves, the revolution set camp on the outskirts of Barquisimeto. Some of the sugar fields in the area have been militarized for almost two months but, beyond methods, the measure has, once again, brought up the debate that authorities and entrepreneurs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela have woven around sugar.

¡Azúcar! And it is not a song by Celia Cruz or the chorus of an old popular song: it is well known that the National Lands Institute has installed itself in some 30 haciendas in the State of Lara against which it has opened administrative proceedings. The “free men and land” preaching wielded by the government against land ownership arrived almost two months ago to the sugar fields of the Turbio river valley.

The National Executive issued a precautionary measure on this area, on the basis that those lands were high quality. Under the certainty that it is more profitable to destine those spaces to items such as cereals and vegetables, the Government insists that the Turbio area can produce much more than sugar. “Only 300 hectares from the 2.400 rescued hectares have ongoing sugar cane crops”, said the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, Elías Jaua, on April 27. "All that sugar cane will be respected and there has never been a prohibition against the continuation of the harvest”.

The sugar cane planters of the Turbio river valley insist, however, that eliminating sugar cane fields from that land will create a domino effect such as the one that precipitated the bankruptcy of the sugar cane processing facilities that existed in the State of Yaracuy, on the other side of their border. "Without farmers there is no food", they insist in every declaration and statement they make to the public opinion. But beyond protests and stickers in the back of their cars, the situation is clear for the president of the Turbio Cane Planters Society, Carlos José Pérez: "If they put an end to the sugar cane sowing in this area, they will also put an end with the Río Turbio Sugar Factory, which produces 12% of the sugar production of this country.

Located 8 kilometers from Barquisimeto, the Turbio central sugar factory has not stopped grinding cane for the past 53 years. From a distance, its chimneys prove they are working. However, up close, in those facilities it is acknowledged that if the National Lands Institute materializes the intervention of the surrounding sugar cane fields, they will spend at least four months without any raw material to operate with.

Even though the sugar processing facility receives harvests from states such as Portuguesa and Barinas, almost half of the business is moved with the sugar cane from that area. “What is normal is that the central sugar factory receives raw material from haciendas located within a 70 kilometer perimeter” says Diego Rivero, institutional manager of the Río Turbio Sugar Factory, to make clear that within the region, there are no areas capable of substituting the sugar cane produced in the Turbio valley.

Rivero fears that the INTI announcement becomes the prelude of the Yaracuy case, where 17,000 hectares of sugar cane disappeared and with them, two central sugar factories. And he is not alone in those fears: the affected sugar cane farmers of the Turbio valley demanded an explanation from INTI regarding the events that took place in their neighbors’ haciendas.

Apart from demanding the de-militarization of their properties, the Lara producers that met with the INTI President, Juan Carlos Loyo, demanded an explanation about what they want to do. But further, they demand to know whatever happened to the Yaracuy sugar cane fields after their intervention. “If that land is unproductive, what do they want from us?, asks Carlos José Pérez, President of the Sugar Cane Farmers Society. In Venezuela there are a dozen private sugar processing plants and another one that is State property.

Even though there are 18 installed central sugar factories, 3 have been paralyzed for many years and 2 were reactivated by the government this year. The Yaracuy example is very obvious, because in that entity, only one central sugar factory remains from the five central sugar factories in operation for 20 years.

"Two of them failed a long time ago and the other two didn’t make it” says the Yaracuy Fedecámaras President, Fandor Quiroga. The business simply stopped being profitable when their surrounding captive market was finished because of the land invasions and the intervention policies forwarded by the national and regional governments from December 2004.

Yaracuy used to contribute 20,6% of the national production. Today, it does not even reach 4% of the approximately one million tons of sugar produced by Venezuelan sugar refineries. That is the situation that has set off an alarm among the Lara producers.

In times of shortage, when supermarkets show sugar deficiencies, Pérez believes there is no reason to criticize the harvests located in the Barquisimeto outskirts. He insists that the intervention of sugar cane fields will only bring more shortage, and affirms that the Turbio central factory is one of the most important sugar factories of the country: “It contributes, together with other three, 45% of the entire national production”.

To be continued…

The Turbio river valley has more than 12.100 hectares distributed between the Peña municipality in Yaracuy and the Iribarren and Palavecino municipalities in Lara. It is located in a depression where the harvest of sugar cane has been predominant for the last two centuries. The Ministry of Agriculture and Lands started an administrative proceeding against the haciendas located in the 2,400 hectares of this space, to review, through INTI, the ownership and harvests developed in these properties.

On March 25, INTI’s President, Juan Carlos Loyo, announced that it was a measure intended to rescue extensions of land that are abandoned or sub-used. The sugar cane farmers, however, are asking themselves how the government could reach that conclusion if the land surveys show that the Turbio valley is far from having the best lands of the country.

The national mandatory, Hugo Chávez, from the State of Lara, in the edition of the program Aló Presidente aired on May 7, 2006 criticized the sows along the valley. That day, he affirmed that those were badly used spaces. He further denounced the mechanisms used the harvest the sow and ordered municipal authorities to begin an expropriation process. “You cannot be planting sugar cane there, these sows are marginal and besides, setting the land on fire….. That is an attempt against city life!”.

The controversy has continued all these years and for that reason, the Agriculture Faculty of the Universidad Centroocidental Lisandro Alvarado published in April, a report that shows that changing the sow of the Turbio valley is not an entirely wild idea.

The document recognizes that the tradition of the Turbio producers applies traditional methods where they burn the harvest one day a year to extract cane. According to professors of this University, the sugar cane farmers can substitute the sugar cane sow but they also note that sugar cane sowing is not especially harmful to the local ecosystem because it lacks fertilizers that could pollute the Turbio River.

That is why the UCLA has arrived to a more salomonic solution which is to keep sowing cane but “using agriculture that is more ecological, that prevents fires to obtain harvest”. Nevertheless, this story is not yet finished. By the end of this month, the term granted by INTI to the sugar cane farmers to prove ownership of their land will soon expire. By then, the doubts predicting a reenactment of failure of the Lara central sugar factories such as the failure that closed the doors in Yaracuy will be cleared. To be continued….