Experts predict bumper sugar harvest for 2021
Article by February 27, 2021
Favourable rainfall and improved yields have led experts to predict that the 2021 sugar harvest will produce more than it did last year.
With the season set to commence on March 1, Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Indar Weir told members of the media during a press conference at Wakefield, St John this morning, that it has been projected that 107 000 tonnes of sugar cane yields would be produced this year, 17 more than the 90 000 tonnes reaped in 2020.
“We have produced 7 200 tones of sugar and we are deliberately reducing that now to 5 200 to satisfy the domestic consumption and then for export to the United States,” Weir said.
2021 crop may near 100,000 tonnes
Article by January 8, 2021
Despite an unfavourable business climate in Barbados due largely to restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is much hope for an improved sugar harvest.
Both public and private sector stakeholders are upbeat about production for the 2021 crop, which they expect will start in mid-February.
Chairman of the Barbados Sugar Industry Limited (BSIL) Mark Sealy said this country is forecasting a 15 per cent increase in sugarcane output.
“Last year we did about 91,000 tonnes of cane, so it will be 15 per cent on top of that. Fifteen per cent is about another 14,000 tonnes of cane and that would put us at 105,000 tonnes. If the weather is good, then I think we would get a little bit more than that,” Sealy told