Imagine waking up before dawn to a full day of feeding pigs, tending crops, tilling soil, chopping bushes.... nothing nice at all, and surely not the life most city dwellers would choose. But that's what farmers do every day, in a job where there's few holidays, and no weekends.
It's a demanding lifestyle with few rewards and only rare recognition for excellence. But you can't argue with numbers: Belize's farmers contribute 23% of the gross domestic product, earn 40% of foreign exports and employ 30% of the population. And this weekend the farmers get their chance to take center stage; amidst all the styling and profiling that has become the attraction at the Agricultural and Trade Fair you'll find some men and women with calloused hands and sweat on their brows.
An elite three of them will be the junior, senior and woman farmers of the year but more than just names on a paper, what's it really like for these men and women of the soil? Alfonso Noble went far afield to find out why farming still matters.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
18-year-old Edward Castro operates a farm in the Maskall area where he's put in work to produce fruit trees, plantains, onions and pigs. Aurora Manzanero runs a farm in the Cow Creek Area of Stann Creek where she's planted all manner of fruit trees as well as oranges. Lucio Sho is from the Toledo District where he too raises pigs, chickens, cacao and other fruit trees and vegetables for sale. These three are the farmers of the year who were selected as 2004's agriculture stars in recognition of the work that they put in to put food on your plate.
Eugene Waight, Chief Agricultural Officer
"We do the selection for the senior, female, and junior farmer to show the work that these people do on a daily basis to generate their own income for their own livelihood and the diversity of the different activities that they have. Normally the person that wins is a person that is well diversified, he will probably have to have some crops some livestock, and be a full time farmer most of all."
And the two men and women fit the criteria for the judges and put in long hours in their farm to produce those fresh fruits and vegetables as well as the meat that we consume on a daily basis. It's not the easiest vocation: rising at the crack of dawn, and going into the farm to bring the farm to yield, but they consider farming a way of life that they wouldn't trade for anything.
Aurora Manzanero, Female Farmer Of The Year
"From I was small I liked the bush. I didn't like school but I preferred the bush to school so I used to work that more than anything else. From I was 8 years old I started to use my gun, I ride my horse, I used to chase the cattle with rope and catch them, and help my father most of the time. I married and I still continue."
Edward Castro, Junior Farmer of The Year
"I always heard about people getting selected for junior farmers and I said one of these days I would get it. So you got to put your effort and stuff and out of that you get the outcome. The work is not too hard it is your mind and if you put your mind to what you want to do it will be easy. And there will be be bumpy times on the hill, sometimes it will feel hard and stuff but you just have to work with it."
Lucio Sho, Senior Farmer of the Year
"I try to develop it so that my children will benefit and then they will get the principle of agriculture."
And his vision of farming as an ongoing expanding endeavor is squares with that of Chief Agricultural Officer Eugene Waight who says that agriculture is what keeps the economy afloat. More than this it is what gives a country its food security.
Eugene Waight, Chief Agricultural Officer
"Agriculture is really an important sector in the entire economy and is the bedrock of the livelihood of many people in our country. In terms of food security, agriculture is definitely the sector that will provide a nation with its food. I am not saying that we cannot do without tourism but if you don't have food for your nation then you cannot survive."
Lucio Sho,
"I actually don't need anything else from anywhere else apart from this piece of land."
Aurora Manzanero,
"When you want to eat something you only go and dig it out. I want my soup I go and kill my chicken. If I want my fish: my son goes and get the fish for me and I do my soup, my boil-up, my hudut. Anything I want to eat, lobster I get lobster, we keep ourselves going and most of my things I don't buy. During the whole year I got my fruits to eat, I got my chicken, I got my pigs so no worries."
No worries except that at a time when everyone seems to be trying to leave the land to pursue less strenuous and "cleaner" occupations, agriculture is neglected. These farmers say that those who make that choice are giving up too much for too little because there is as much money and self esteem in farming as there is in an office job.
Edward Castro,
"When you go work for people what you can get can do in three months time you might take so much months to get it - like half a year."
Lucio Sho,
"I raise low cost and high breed pigs and the same the thing with chickens. With that I help my children to go to school and I try to tell them to get involved in the kind of farming that we actually use. We have our corn for our native food; we have our rice, our beans and so I mean this can grow in this same soil so let us not be so dependable on something else. Let us depend on the land that gives to us."
Aurora Manzanero,
"Try to work the land because later we might have the money but we won't have nothing to eat. If you don't plant you won't got nothing to eat later because things are getting worse. We have to plant so we can eat. If the people would work the land, Belize would be better than it is now because you have some kids 10 or 11 who don't even know how to plant a tree. My father used to teach me when I was growing up to plant so you can eat later."
At agric show opening ceremonies this afternoon, the farmers were presented with prizes including $1,000 in cash. The National Agriculture and Trade Show opens tomorrow morning and runs through to Sunday evening and will feature a great variety of attractions.