Yesterday, the government of Belize made the casual announcement that Cabinet had authorised Orange Walk and Corozal sugarcane farmers to deliver 50,000 tons of sugarcane to the west to be milled by the Santander Sugar Group.
It may seem plainly practical, but it sends a shockwave through the established norms in this industry - where cane in the north is delivered exclusively to the ASR/BSI Mill at Tower Hill.
Today, the CEO for Agriculture spoke with the government press office - and simply said that it makes sense and will mean more money for farmers stuck with cane that exceeds their quota:
Servulo Baeza, CEO, Ministry of Agriculture
"The issue is that some cane farmers already filled their quotas at BSI and still have cane that they won't be able to deliver and so we will be looking at those cane farmers along with the ones that are willing to sell to Santander, because it's their choice and looking at the fields that can be harvested by the group. The Santander group, the cane that they received is mechanized, so not all fields can be harvested with machines, with the harvesters. So we will have to determine through the field visits to see which are the fields that can be harvested. If they don't harvest their canes, they get nothing. It just stays there in
the field. In the north we are estimating right now that we would have over one hundred thousand tons of cane that will stay there that will be stand over as we would call it, but won't be able to be harvested. Santander can't absorb the whole hundred thousand tons, they are saying our mill capacity looking at what we have and the time period that we have, we can probably help with fifty thousand tons and that's it. We really appreciate the cooperation from the mill and I think it happens in other countries where mills help each other out, when you can't do something and the other would try to assist and so on."
And while CEO Baeza makes it seem like just common sense, today, ASR/BSI sent out a terse release saying, quote, "Belize Sugar Industries Ltd.'s (BSI) intention is to grind all the cane contracted to BSI, as we do every year...Neither BSI, nor to our knowledge, the farmers, were consulted prior to the government's decision to authorize the delivery of 50,000 tons of sugarcane from (northern) farmers to…the Santander Sugar Group…We have no further comments at this time." End quote.
