And in one more bit of agricultural news, last night you heard the remarks from the Minister of Agriculture explaining why he believes Belize should shift its export focus principally to Central America and turn to the Caribbean only sporadically.
That's because trade into the region where Belize is a member state may sound good on paper, but it has practical limitations - which start with shipping and continue right through to market access.
Yesterday Minister Mai gave an example of how difficult it can be to find a Caribbean market for our red kidney beans:
Hon. Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture, Food Security & Enterprise
"Right now, we have 180 containers of red kidney beans ready to market. Belize is the only country in Central America that produces and consumes red kidney beans, Central America does not. Our red kidney beans have to go to the CARICOM. Time and time again, this was since I was at ministry of agriculture many years ago, they would send a request to wave CET, because there are no beans in Jamaica. First Belize expressed, do we have beans or we don't have beans and if we don't have, we want to waiver for so much thousand metric tonnes, not pounds of red kidney beans and you grant them that waiver and twice that amount go in and then they load up all their storages and our crop comes in, we can't sell it. Look at sugar right now it's in the courts, so the business ethic, the trade ethic has a lot to be improved."
