BMDC Expands Farming Support

Belize’s agricultural sector is taking on a modern edge with new technology giving farmers tools to process and preserve crops for a year-round supply. The Belize Marketing and Development Corporation (BMDC) opened its doors today to showcase equipment and products that have been driving the change in how small farmers do business.

Sergio Tillett, Senior Projects Officer at BMDC, said the goal was to bring awareness to the work that the department has been engaging in. “We have to make sure people find out about all the different products that we have now, the different services we are providing, and all the equipment we are managing to source and help out agroprocessors and small farmers.”

“In the past the BMDC was about just the importation of vegetables, but not anymore. Now, we have new products, newer dynamic packages that we want to show.”

Among those dynamic packages is the ability of the new facilities to allow fruits to be packaged, frozen, and stored for up to a year, according to Tillett. “In the past, when you had fruits, you had fruits in abundance, and after that, there were none. Not anymore,” he said. “Doing this new value addition that we have now will definitely give more market to our small farmers.”