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Here's how they are trying to introduce new climate resilient strains of cane:

Dr. Colin Young, Executive Director
"Five years ago, the government had approached the five Cs, along with the stakeholders, the farmers and BSI and SIRDI, to look at the possibility of accessing resources to help farmers deal with all of the variability that they're experiencing in the industry."

"Some years they have too much water, some years too little water, and then they have this persistent problem with the stem borers and the hoppers and others. And so we tried to design a project that would allow the farmers, that if they practice better land management techniques and they had different varieties of seed cane, that they can diversify away from the B79 variety that the use now, that it will build the resilience of the industry to the effects of climate change."

Olivia Carballo Avilez, Cane Farmer Relation Manager, BSI
"We have now 11 new varieties that we're able to share with the farming community. So this really is an important project to roll out those varieties. BSI can't do it alone. We've done the research for it."

"There is no a silver bullet or a silver bullet variety that will be resilient to everything, to drought, flood and whatever. So we have to find a diversity of varieties so that we're able to confront the climate impacts that we're facing."

Dr. Colin Young, Executive Director
"The impacts of climate change are only getting worse and every year we see it getting worse. And so the project is very timely because the investments that it will make will seek to build a very solid and systematic foundation that then once it works, then they can scale it up to the entire industry."

"It requires change in behavior of the farmer. It requires changes in agricultural practices. It requires making sure that there are nutrients that we can put back on the soil so that the yield of the sugar cane can be better."

Olivia Carballo Avilez, Cane Farmer Relation Manager, BSI
"We are use to doing smaller plots and in shorter rows. This will require that we do bigger plots, bigger blocks of area, longer rows, straighter rows, and try to mechanize some of the activities in order to be resilient."

Dr. Colin Young, Executive Director
"Project implementation can be challenging because we may get hurricanes in the next five years. We may get floods, we will get droughts, and so as we respond to these things, how do we have the ability to be agile, to adapt, to be able to change our strategies as needed, but ultimately being guided by the fact that what we want to do is to improve the livelihoods of the sugarcane farmers."