Labor Shortage Threatens Belize’s Sugar Industry

It’s a job fewer and fewer Belizeans want to do, but it’s one that keeps our economy moving: cutting sugarcane. Last season, over a hundred thousand tons of cane were left to rot because there just weren’t enough hands to harvest. Now, while the industry is slowly shifting to mechanical farming, the need for manual labor is still huge. Farmers have leaned on immigrant workers for years, but rising transport costs and work permit fees are eating into already thin profits. So, how do we close that labor gap, and why aren’t Belizeans stepping into the fields? We put those questions to Marcos Osorio, Chairman of the Sugar Industry Control Board.

 

Marcos Osorio, Chairman, Sugar Industry Control Board

“We need government to assist us, but government cannot assist unless we are organized. And we maybe as an industry that we can come and say, for the upcoming harvest season, the industry needs a hundred cane cutters and we have identified eighteen in Guatemala and twenty in Honduras. These are the names. This we have done all our due diligence. And now that we have everything in place, then government, then we can come to government and say, how can you facilitate the process? And I think an important element to mention is that the cost to bring, to import labor from experiences of farmers that did import some labor last for the past crop, it was costing them almost six hundred dollars per cane cutter, and that’s only the cost of the stamp at the border. And then by the time the permit is approved, it’s another three hundred dollars. Every stamp is two hundred dollars. In the past, it was fifty dollars per stamp per month. Now it is two hundred dollars per stamp per month. The permit used to cost, the worker permit used to cost two hundred dollars. Now it is costing three hundred.”

 

Shane Williams

“And why is it difficult to get Belizeans to do the job? Is it the pay or the labor itself?”

 

Marcos Osorio

“One is the pay. Two it is very dirty work in terms of being out in the sun hot all day getting all the ashes from the, because it’s burnt cane that we harvest. And then the pay is not that – do not serve much as an incentive.”