Fusarium Treatment Project Brings Hope to Cane Farmers

Belize’s sugar industry is facing a major crisis and farmers in the north are feeling the heat. A fast-moving plant disease called fusarium has already caused over fifty million dollars in losses, wiping out crops and threatening livelihoods. But there’s a glimmer of hope. Instead of handing out free fertilizers this year, the Ministry of Agriculture is redirecting its support fund to fight the disease head-on. The treatment involves a two-step process, first neutralizing the bacteria with a chemical that inhibits the growth of fungi, then killing it with a fungicide. Agriculture Minister Jose Abelardo Mai shares an update on how the battle against fusarium is progressing.

 

Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture

“The people at SIRDI have informed us and we witnessed the first applications. I went back to those fields. We did it three weeks ago, and there seems to be very good response from the first treatment. There’s one treatment of fungicide and three treatments of biologicals. The first treatment has been done and the second has begun, and the first few,  I saw in personally and they look very much improved. So it gives us hope. By the twenty-second of August, the report I got yesterday is that we supposed to complete the treatments for the five, for the two thousand acres. So fibe hundred acres  would do us two thousand one hundred acres. The farmers would put a part of it and we put a part of it. So we, we co-invest. But there are farmers who are unable to afford it to be truthful. They don’t even have a hundred dollars to apply to the field per acre. So it’s a very difficult for the farmers. And understand, this is a pilot. This is a pilot trial. It seems to be working real well, and that gives us some hope. The problem, if that is the case that’s working well, then the concern is at what cost will do it, right? So if you cast your two hundred fifty dollars per acre, you are talking, you are applying three bags of fertilizer more per acre. The farmer can barely put one bag of fertilizer per acre right now with the price of sugar, of sugar, of right now. So the farmer’s in a very, very difficult position, right? And so we hope to finish those treatments by the twenty-second of August.”