COTTON PICKERS SAY THEY DESERVE MORE MONEY
By Sheria Brathwaite
If all goes according to plan, the pay for harvesting cotton will soon increase, says agronomist with the Barbados Agricultural Management Company (BAMC) Nyah Nyhathu.
Reapers harvest the fibre for $2 per pound, a rate established more than 15 years ago, and amid calls from cotton pickers for more money, Nyhathu explained in an interview with Barbados TODAY that could be realised if there was an increase in acreage, yields and production of lint.
When a Barbados TODAY team visited the only two locations where cotton is being harvested this year – – Searles Farm in Newton and the Ministry of Agriculture in Graeme Hall, both in Christ Church – several pickers said they wanted their pay moved up from $2 to $5 per pound but were willing to accept $3.50.
Juanna Cox, who has been picking cotton since 1988, said that given the high cost of living and the fact that harvesters had to battle the elements, they deserved more money.
“I am speaking on behalf of everyone that picks cotton; we need an increase. When I started picking cotton it was 40 cents and picking at $2 is not cutting it. Picking cotton is not an easy job. You have to endure the heat and the rain. We do it because it is something we like to do and work is really hard right now . . . The money should increase because everything is going up – from your water bill to food prices and even bus fare is more than you get for picking cotton and people have to catch the bus and come here,” said Cox who was harvesting the fibre with two other family members in a field at Graeme Hall.
Her sentiments were echoed by fellow pickers Denise Weekes and Veronica Walcott and other women who were harvesting the fibre at Newton but did not want to be identified.
Nyhathu said that Exclusive Cottons of the Caribbean Inc., the company responsible for exporting the lint, was willing to offer an increase once the conditions were right.
He said the BAMC was experimenting with a new model this year that could achieve that in subsequent years.
“We have been stuck at this allocation of price for over 15 years and we would like to see it move. But the powers that be keep telling us to get our yields up and with this model we would be on that trajectory. So, hopefully, if we do better than we did last year, we hope that [Exclusive Cottons] would meet us at the table and see if something could be arranged a little more palatable,” he said.
“There is a possibility we could start to ramp up production . . . . This year [for the replanting cycle] we [BAMC] plan to cultivate between 250 and 500 acres of cotton. So once we get this model right and the results come back in terms of what we would like to see, such as upping the yields and pest and disease control, we will implement the model next year to see more cotton going into the ginnery.”
Nyhathu noted that better pay for workers would also be beneficial to the industry in the long term as it would attract more pickers.
This year, the BAMC created an incentive programme for pickers under which they get extra earnings if they reach a certain benchmark.
To rake in the millions of dollars needed to make the industry lucrative again, Exclusive Cottons would need at least 80 000 pounds of the lint annually.
Over the years, however, Barbados has fallen well short of that mark, producing around 10 000 pounds annually, on average.
This year, poor germination has significantly impacted the planting process with a total of only about 40 acres of land across the island with cotton.
Nyhathu said although things may appear dismal on the surface, the BAMC’s new model to revitalise the industry would see things looking up.
He said it is in line with the Ministry of Agriculture’s plan to increase production and allow officials to have better control of what takes place in the field.
“We are not growing the acreage that we were growing in the past. We had some issues with the germination of the seeds. I’m not sure if it had to do with how the seeds are stored, if it was temperature-wise or if it was pest and disease; but for some reason, the cotton did not germinate well.
“We [BAMC] deal with scheduling so we had to do some replanting. So what you see at Newton was our efforts at replanting. On that end, it would have curtailed acreage in terms of what we wanted; we were aiming to plant about 100 acres,” Nyhathu said.
Despite the hiccups, he said the BAMC had “more control over the crop”. He said the state agency was able to clean the fields of cow itch and implement better crop husbandry practices.
Nyhathu added that he hoped more pounds of the fibre would be reaped per acre using the new model.
The cotton season got underway on February 27 and will conclude on May 1.
In January, Minister of Agriculture Indar Weir announced that his ministry planned to increase the amount of cotton planted to 2 000 acres.
Last year, Barbados produced 6 000 pounds of Sea Island Cotton from 17 956 pounds of fibre, while in 2021, 27 845 pounds of cotton was harvested producing 9 282 pounds of lint.
Sea Island Cotton is priced at more than US$10 per pound.
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb
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