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Sembrando Vidas - its direct translation means "Sowing Lives" and that's exactly what the Mexican government hopes to do in Belize. The project seeks to contribute to the social welfare of 2,000 Belizean small farmers, and started back in August with the selection and vetting process. And finally today, it was launched, and the farmers received their debit cards. At the ceremony, the executive director of the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation and the Minister of Agriculture told us more.
Dr Laura Carrillo Cubillas, Executive Director, AMEXCID
"We are so excited. We started back home. Actually, we have millions and millions of beneficiaries. So we can say that our pilot program was back home and we've been working on it for four years now. And President Lopez wanted to share what we have learned in this program with other countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador."
"But last year, he visited himself. And so Prime Minister Johnny Briceno told him, you know, what would you have Sembrando Vida here in Belize City. And so the president told us here to just go ahead and do it. We have 2000 beneficiaries by now. And it's so important because what we're trying to do is not only, you know, get together for a nice ceremony and then not see each other again forever, no."
"We do want to be here. And you're going to be able to see that our team is going to be working close to the parcels, close to the people. We want to share what we know and we want to make sure that everybody has a chance to develop in their own country, in their own land, and that we can work together and be stronger. We need to be stronger as a region."
Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"The project has been in the pipeline for a year now, we are finally hitting the ground with it. Today what you saw was the first farmers getting their debit card for which the project will deposit in their account the monies that they will get monthly. But beside that there are a lot of bio inputs that will be given to the farmers. I say bio inputs because Sembrando Vida focuses on environmentally friendly practices. Moving away from fertilizers and heavy strong agro chemicals, moving over to bio inputs is the focus of this program and so we're seeing that today. Totally, the project is about 3 million US dollars, 6 million Belize dollars, which will be given in cash and in part inputs to the farmers so it's going to take us a long way and it's really focusing on what we are now really concerned about, which is environmental friendly practices, it seeks to conserve the environment, it seeks to reclaim agriculture lands during the practices so I think it's something that there's a good place to start and certainly the ministry will capitalize on it definitely."
