So, what about those phantom farmers we’ve been telling you about? No one knows for sure how many persons are registered as farmers, who don’t actually farm cane. Insiders say that it is a widespread practice.

This week, we got a chance to speak to leaders within all 3 cane farming associations. 

We asked if there might be undetected ghost farmers within the 3 organizations. Here’s how those conversations went:

Daniel Ortiz
"Is there any information that the BSCFA management team has to lend credibility that there be other members within your association or outside who are engaging in this same sort of activity?"

Oscar Alonzo - CEO, BSCFA
"Well as far as you know this same situation with this farmer in San Estevan we are not aware of any other than that."

Daniel Ortiz
“Is it a concern that they may be others who you haven’t detected?â€￾

Oscar Alonzo - CEO, BSCFA
“Well it’s possible right and this is why we are setting up these procedures okay to sort of support what the SPCP is doing and to ensure that the farmer that appears there is given the due service and attention that they SPCP should give them to try to make sure that this sort of thing doesn’t occur.â€￾

Cosme Hernandez - Representative, PSPA
“We got certified last year and under fair trade we have a certain criteria to follow and sincerely the criteria of fair trade ask for is for the benefit of the farmers at the end of the day. Of course we have our challenges, we’ve been listening to about those farmers but we’re dealing with it internally and we’re making sure that each farmer delivers cane in their name. We’ve heard about certain farmers that buy cane but we’re dealing with that right now.â€￾

Elvis Canul - Chairman, CSCPA
“As an association and responsible for 619 members we do some internal policies that we need to see whatever arrangement that other farmers may have because they do exist administration of grant. However the implications that would have if an added would come will depend individually on the arrangements that each individual cane farmer has taken. As an association we are prepared to do internal policies to address this issues.â€￾

“Our association has an open door policy to membership however we do some screening when you want to enter our association; we do some screening as a board to allow us to ensure that indeed it is a registered cane farmer.â€￾

Alonzo stressed to us today that it’s too costly to monitor their own farmers to verify if their cane fields are active. He says this is a responsibility of the Sugar Cane Production Committee. He says that the SCPC ought to be doing these field surveys very frequently, but now their association will start doing it.