Sugarcane Crisis Triggers Five-Million-Dollar Intervention

A costly pest outbreak is threatening Belize’s sugar belt, and government is stepping in with emergency support. Cabinet has approved five-point-two million dollars to fund large-scale pesticide treatments across thousands of acres of affected cane fields in the north. Carlos Pol, Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Economic Transformation, says the intervention comes at a critical time, after mealybugs and Fusarium disease contributed to more than twelve million dollars in production losses. With cane yields and farmers’ livelihoods at risk, the race is now on to contain the outbreak before it causes further damage.

 

Carlos Pol, Chief Executive Officer, Ministry of Economic Transformation

“Last year we have a decline in the sugar production, both in terms of the cane and the sugar produced. So if we don’t address it, we will expect similar situation or worse if we don’t, if we don’t address the situation urgently. So government decided to approve, government approved about five point two million Belize to address the urgent situation and this would be for the association to do spraying. We expect to do insecticide spraying for one hundred thousand acres of land, which should cover all the sugar, the cane field. But we agree that it will be government will be giving half to them as a grant and the other half they will be paying for the next four crop seasons. This is in addition to ongoing projects that we have. We have the CRRESAP World Bank project, the Climate Resilient Agricultural project, which has some resources for pestis- pest as well, and we have a new project with the Green Climate Fund. The CRRESAP is a US twenty-five million. The Green Climate Fund, it’s thirty million US. And also address the situation with regards to varieties and looking at the land and how to have varieties of kind- kind that will be able to resist certain pest.”

 

Pol explains that preserving the industry is high priority for the government as it contributes an estimated fourteen percent to Belize’s economy.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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