Also at this morning's event representing the productive sector was chairman of the BSCFA Fred Ortega.
His industry will need financing going forward because this sugar crop is looking anything but sweet.
First, the heavy rains over the past month have affected the sucrose content of the sugar cane in the fields.
Ortega gave us a sobering forecast for this year's sugar cane yield.
Alfredo Ortega, BSCFA Committee of Management
"Well in reality the cane season as we speak is very tough for the farmers because as you have seen we are experiencing rain almost on a daily basis and the land has been wet from long ago. So the amount of rain that falls on a daily basis is really affecting us and it's getting every day, harder for the farmers to harvest because of the amount of rain that is there and problems with the sugar roads are unable to fixed because of the rain. So there are a lot of problems right now the farmers are facing, well for us myself as a farmer and as a group leader we are facing very hard difficulties to harvest right now because of the weather. Mostly it's the weather conditions and well, with that connected the situation with the problems of the pests that we encountered so the quality of our cane is not so good at this moment as we speak, but the farmers are trying they are trying their best and we are trying to see how we can really workout. We had some instances right now that our quality was showing that it was improving but nevertheless the rain comes again and we go right back again to where we are at the start."
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