And one of the important farming communities in the bread basket of Orange Walk South will soon be seeing an upgrade to their farm feeder road.
Today the Government and Resilient Rural Belize signed a contract with A&N Construction Limited valued at 1.19 million dollars for a road that runs just over 3 miles miles along the front of several farms near San Carlos and Indian Church. Today the Minister of Agriculture and area rep explained why this upgrade is necessary.
Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"San Carlos is very important to the nation because San Carlos produces a lot of vegetables. This is the food security community and I said earlier that when I arrived in this village the first time in 1988 there was not even a road I had to come by boat."
"Today we have advanced, but there's still a lot of work more to do. We have reached a peak where we have enough production to supply the country, but as we start to produce more we start to run into problems."
"So we've now started to think about industrializing the agriculture sector and San Carlos falls into that. So what you see around here is not only the homes, but actually you see an industrial area, an agriculture industrial area."
"That far from here we have the papaya industry, papaya packing plant, we have the grain producers not far from here, we also have the largest cattle exporting facility in the country. So it's not only people that live here it's an agro -industry area and so San Carlos is in the middle of that so that this road is the beginning of something good for San Carlos."
"It's only beginning though, because we need to complete the road upgrading from Indian Church to San Felipe. This one here from San Carlos to Indian church is a three mile stretch at 1.1 million dollars to upgrade and in September we hope to sign the contract for the design of the Indian church to San Felipe Road and thereafter maybe by December we can sign the contract for that road."
"But this will definitely reduce the cost of transportation of moving products from here all the way to Belize City. It will make the product arrive at the market in a healthier wholesome fresh manner, so this is very important and it will open the avenue for more tourists to visit Lamanai."
"This part of the country here is both tourism and agriculture and in doing so you we will be implementing Plan Belize."
