We got a chance to talk with the new Agriculture Minister, Jose Mai, about the rapid resumption of the previous cattle exporting regime which the outgoing government put a stop to earlier this year.
Former PM Barrow said that it was flat out illegal, and so, we asked about the mixed messaging that the Belizean livestock producers may be receiving from this change:
Hon. Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture, Food Security, Enterprise
"I don't know if you can categorize it as a mix message or a wrong message. I would say it was a wrong message. When the prime minister said that there were repercussions that the Guatemalans had indicated that we can't continue, we were never shown any diplomatic note indicating so which although we had asked for a diplomatic note, we didn't see any diplomatic note we haven't seen anything in black and white in saying that these are the repercussions. If the Guatemalans had a problem on their side then that would have been totally a Guatemalan issue not a Belizean issue, that was very clear from the onset. So, today the farmers are exporting cattle. I do not know the exact amount but Friday and Saturday I know that substantial amount of cattle left or were moved to the Bullet Tree area there was no police intervention, there was no more police hustling which I think is done because before there were seeking payment for load of cattle that has stopped and I am grateful to the police to have stopped it and I am happy for the cattle farmers who right now have had a great relief. Farmers have explained to me that they were preparing for bankruptcy. DFC had been calling them and asking them for payment which they were unable to do because of the inability to sell cattle. One of the worst things that could happen to any farmer is to go to the expense of growing a crop, raising an animal and not being able to sell it, that is the worst punishment any farmer can receive in any part of the world."
One of Mai's ministerial colleagues who is supporting this cattle export change is Landy Habet, the Area Representative for Cayo North East. Many of his constituents are cattle farmers in the Cayo district, and they were among livestock producers who needed to urgently sell their produce. Here's what he had to say about it:
Hon. Landy Habet, Area Rep. Cayo North East
"The Cayo district in a whole is a cattle growing community. My constituency involves Spanish Lookout and Santa Familia and some other small villages and most of them have a few head of cattle but the Spanish Lookout Community and other areas that have large amounts of cattle were impacted severely because they did not have an avenue where to take out their cattle and I had told the prime minister in the house that while we understand that at some point in time we will have to formalize the market, that is understood, but you don't break off what has been happening for 20 plus years and you take it off overnight. I know that a question was posed to the minister of agriculture just a few days ago and they asked him whether or not we will start selling cattle but we also want…they needed to know that there is sale for it somebody that is a buyer, well, we have been in contact with the buyers and they are just waiting to buy. As a matter of fact, in the last few days, truck loads and trailer loads of cattle are already going out, so, what is going to happen also is that as the cattle start to go out and the surplus gets depleted, the prices will come up back to where they were, hopefully to where they were because we have lost about 40 percent of the pricing in the cattle and so the revenue are a lot less."
