For the first time there is a new variety of rice being grown and harvested in Belize for Local consumption and possible export. This weekend we traveled to Blue Creek to find that the aromatic and exotic Jasmine rice has a future as a lucrative export, but don't try to make rice and beans with it.
Alfonso Noble Reporting, [From Blue Creek in Orange Walk]
Through assistance from the Taiwanese Mission, Belize this year began the production of Jasmine Rice. This variety of rice is different from Cypress that we are accustomed to. Director of Hill Bank Agricultural Company in Blue Creek Peter Dyck says that the new rice has potential but only as an export.
Peter Dyck, Hill Bank Agricultural Company
"Belize is a small country and there is a small market here. If you grow a lot of Jasmine and you grow a poor quality there is not going to be an export market for poor quality Jasmine rice. The Jasmine has different cooking requirements. I do not cook; my wife is much better at it and she has been going at it for a while until she found out that the Jasmine can be cooked to the same texture as the regular Cypress that we have on the market. But there are different techniques it requires and with marketing we will be bringing forward the requirements that it needs to cook the Jasmine successfully. Jasmine is a sticky rice if it is cooked like regular rice therefore people will not like it. It will not work with rice and beans because of the aroma that it has which tends to throw off the real rice and beans meaning with the aroma that comes out. The aroma is very attractive but not when it is cooked together with beans."
But even as Jasmine is not suited for rice and beans this variety has great potential on the export market where it is highly sought. Dyck says that barring all constraints he's had in producing rice this year, it was not all bad and he's produced enough to look at the prospect of exporting.
Peter Dyck,
"We had 430 acres this last year, this last crop I should say which was 2004 and we had an average yield of 4000 pounds an acre. Our yield in the field was much higher than that but we had serious losses in the field due to bad weather. We have currently around 850 tons in stock of Jasmine rice and we expect to export most of it in this coming 9 months before we start a new crop again. If we just look into the U.S. market it retails in the U.S. for US $1.90 a pound. Now we don't expect to get half of that because we have shipping and customs and duties that we have to look at and the wholesale price is normally less than what the retail price. I am hoping that we will be able to get maybe a $1.00 a pound for export."
But even as Dyck looks forward to the production of Jasmine rice for export he admits that it's not been easy to produce rice for that purpose especially because of the high costs.
Peter Dyck,
"One of our main problems is that the rice for export, grain exports have never really been seriously looked at from the government side because no infrastructure has been put in place to really support export. The way the whole system works here in Belize from the time you invest into a farm you start off by paying high interest rates, you start off by using high tax fuel to do your land clearing. You know we have gone through all of that; we have been paying extremely high taxes to clear our land with infrastructure. We spent millions of dollars in that area all under high taxes. Our main setback is that for us to export we have to have an incentive, a tax rebate or something in order for us really to go into export because the high costs that we have up to now is going to avoid us from exporting in the future."
That's definitely not good news but for Dyck and other rice producers. They're hoping to have some attention directed to them for increasing Belize's pool of exports…adding one more export commodity to it: Jasmine rice.
Presently Hill Bank Agricultural Company is the only operation producing Jasmine rice in the country.
7NEWS produced for broadcast by News Director Jules Vasquez
Edited for the internet by Keith Swift