And as the industry takes a turn towards Smart farming, it sounds like quite an investment for farmers. We asked the Minister Of State For Foreign Trade whether farmers will receive assistance on import duties to purchase and ship their heavy machinery and equipment to Belize for use. Here's how he answered us.
Osmond Martinez, Minister of State for Foreign Trade
"The industry is already enjoying that part so anytime they bring in any tractors, harrows, plowers, combiners, riveters they due enjoy the duty exemption process and it is being handled based on individual applications that are being sent by the farmers. But the most important part is that for the first time for the new crop we have a total of about 14 million Belize dollars in addition to 5Cs through the CRESAP project that will be supporting the farmers to help to continue with the prevention of fusarium and at the same time there are some issues with mealy bugs so while the production is looking good presently we are not spending all our time on celebrating on todays production but we are also planning for the future in parallel that the next harvest should be better than today's harvest."
