Also out west, Government has accessed financing of BZ$40 Million from the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Green Climate Fund for a six-year Programme, called Resilient Rural Belize. The idea is to minimize the impacts of climatic and economic events on small farmers while supporting sustainable market access for their produce. Here's more from the ceremony yesterday:
Hon. Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"Valley of Peace farmers are very productive group of people. They contribute a lot to I would describe it as import substitution. If they produce cabbage, we don't have to import and so they do with other products. Providing them with the assistance needed with irrigation and so on will definitely help us meet our objectives, our goal which is try to import less and produce more for our country. The irrigation canal you see there was design by team at Central Farm. we have a drainage and irrigation team, they came here and did the plan and they guided in the process. So that's the technical assistance. Secondly, we have our extension officers on the ground. They help in providing the farmers with technical assistance, control diseases, controlling weeds, the variety selection and so on."
Nerie Sanz, Interim Program Director, Resilient Rural Belize
"This is a project that is supported fully by the government with funding from IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) and the Green Climate Fund. So we are working with groups of farmers and the groups can be formal or informal. In this case, this is an association of farmers. 31 members, they have increase by 2 members and this association is interested in receiving assistance in the production of cabbage and onions using innovative manners so that they can build this resilience to all the climate change that we see happening; lots of rain, so the drainage, with the drought, irrigation and of course capacity building. So the total funding for this matching grant fund is approximately $261,000 and of course the farmers to have buy-in and ownership they will contribute 10% in cash and 5% in kind of their labor."
Hon. Julius Espat, Area Rep., for Cayo South
"We have been working on this for nearly 8 years. This land that they are standing on was a land that we manage to negotiate with Santander 160 acres to be divided on with the 31 farmers. We manage do this as a group, so they form an association and a title was given to the entire group and that's why it is easy for them to be able to approach government, because they had title in their hands and we've been saying for quite a long time, title to land is power and this is a reflection of that. So this is just a continuation of what we have been doing for many years. This is the agricultural phase. We have been working on the organization of phase for quite some time and it's a stepping stone for Cayo South because as I mentioned before these farmers are only 10% of the farmers in the valley and so you can imagine the entire Cayo South and then you go the Cayo District and then you go the country. Its a lot of work that the People's United Party as government has to achieve."
The investments will include the construction of a climate-resilient office, a packing and storage center with equipment, irrigation equipment, the construction of a climate-smart seedling nursery, introducing climate-smart agricultural techniques; and improving production scheduling, planning, and product quality.
