Agriculture Minister, “Cane Farmers Deserve Fair Sugar Price”

The Minister of Agriculture is stirring the pot, this time, over sugar. Jose Abelardo Mai says Belize’s cane farmers have been quietly footing the bill for years, selling sugar below the cost of production. He claims that while the public enjoys sweet prices at the store, farmers are taking a bitter hit. And while some may laugh at the idea, Minister Mai isn’t joking. He says it’s simply unfair, and with rising production costs and growing health concerns around sugar consumption, he’s hinting that a price adjustment may be on the horizon. But don’t panic, he insists it won’t break the bank. In fact, he argues it might even be a good time for Belizeans to cut back on sugar altogether.

 

Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture

“The cane farmers have subsidized the Belizean public with sugar.”

 

Reporter

“People have laughed when you said that.”

 

Jose Abelardo Mai

“Yes, they laugh because it is true. Why, if it costs me seventy-five cents to produce a pound of sugar, why would I sell it for seventy-three. It is unfair, it is unfair to the cane farmers and we’ve lived with that price for so many years. It was cheaper than that before. It was at fifty cents, I think. So who would produce and sell something cheaper than what it costs to produce.”

 

Reporter

“One of the things that I pointed out was that we only sell what, fifteen thousand tons, plantation white and brown on the local market. Like how much of revenue would an increase be for that tonnage?

 

Jose Abelardo Mai

“I have those figures, but I am not prepared to share them yet until I go over them again. But if you look at the per capita consumption of sugar, it’s not a lot, you know. I think it’s about fifty pounds, fifty-six pounds per person, per year, times seventy-five cents. That’s what it costs. So if you increase by twenty-five cents or fifty cents, that will not impoverish everybody. So, it’s not like you will spend thousands of dollars more for sugar. We should consume less sugar as a country. We have obesity, we have hypertension, we have diabetes. We have a lot of these cases in Belize. So we should consume less sugar. And so, I believe that it is not something that would impoverish a nation. It’s not that. It’s not that.”