Under the auspices of OIRSA, BAHA, and the Ministry of Agriculture, top-ranking officials from the agriculture sector in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico began a two day meeting to discuss agriculture as a block encompassing these three countries. The meeting is the third trilateral meeting between the countries and today we were in San Ignacio to find out what's on the table for discussions.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
Agriculture ministers from Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico along with technicians gathered at the San Ignacio Hotel in Cayo to discuss ways in which the three countries can merge expertise and resources to forge a way forward for agriculture as a bloc. And they do so under a simple philosophy.
Ing. Erasmo Sanchez, Guatemala Vice-Minister of Agriculture
"If our small countries do not unite, how can we stand separate? So we have to start learning how to unite and work together and as I said before present ourselves as one. Either we learn to live together or perish separately."
And this follows present globalization trends that has countries forming alliances. Minister of Agriculture Servulo Baeza says that for Belize, it means that we need to look to our neighbors Mexico and Guatemala.
Hon. Servulo Baeza, Minister of Agriculture
"We try to always think of you know like markets in the U.S. or markets in Europe and we never we really looked around us to see that we have a lot of opportunities right around us. The other day we had a visit in Quintana Roo where we were looking at the price habanero pepper for instance and we found out that the price of habanero pepper right here in our neighbor has never fallen from I think 25 pesos per kilo which I think translates to much more than what we are getting in the US market right now. So while we are battling to try to get into the US market, we have a market right next to us. Trade between developing countries is an area that can certainly help us develop also and we can help one another. It is not only between developed countries and developing countries. We can do intra-regional trade which certainly can help us develop. There's a lot of products that will certainly compliment each other and there are certain things that we can take advantage of. It can be our agricultural health status, it can be just small advantages in certain areas because the environment that we have. But these are the things we can take advantage of."
Ing. Rafael Negrete, Agricultural Development Secretary Mexico
[Translation] "We know that our economies may not be as large as others in the world but we know that if we join together and have exchanges in experiences; what we do in Mexico, what is done in Belize, we can become strong to compete with these large countries."
Ing. Erasmo Sanchez,
"I believe that we will have to talk about just countries while in the past we have talked about regions. What region has to get out of this is first work together, see how we help can each other, see what weak links we have in our economy and see if our neighbor can help us with that to strengthen our economies."
But that must have a beginning and this third of it's kind gathering is it. Hopefully at the end of the two days of discussions all three countries will be referring to themselves as a mini-trading bloc if only in agricultural matters.
The meeting will wrap up tomorrow.