body,td,th { font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; }
In other news, Valley of Peace residents are now able to access their farms a lot faster with the upgrading of their road. This project started early last year, under the Resilient Rural Belize program, and today, the road was officially opened. Courtney Menzies travelled west for the ribbon cutting, and has this story.
In March 2023, the government broke ground for the new and improved Valley of Peace road. Today, just two months shy of a year later, that road was officially opened. And while upgraded roads affect all residents, the benefits will be especially felt by the farmers of that village.
Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"Whenever you have an investment in infrastructure like this, road expansion or road upgrading, many things happen. The most important thing is, one stimulate farmers to produce more because they have easier access to the farms. two, is that it lowers the cost of production. The highest cost of food production is the cost of transportation so whenever you improve roads, you lower the cost of production. And the third one is that we improve the quality of the food that gets to the market. These three very important things."
"We all know that majority of the population of Belize lives in rural communities and agriculture being rural, this road would definitely improve the lives of the people in these communities that produce vegetables and I must say to you that Valley of Peace is a large producer of vegetables, especially cabbage, they have cabbage all year round. It is because of them that we have controlled or stopped or really limit the importation of cabbage into Belize because they have cabbage all year round and this is the same road they use to bring out their product."
And this 2.2 million dollar road, funded through the Rural Resilient Project, was built to adapt to climate change. And even though it should withstand rainy weather, it's not finished just yet.
Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"The design of the road is made like that. Sometimes we build roads and don't put culverts, when it rains we have the road being washed out so this road has been designed with that new concept in mind. It has to be resilient agriculture, resilient road building so this is what the design brought to the road, it was designed that way."
Dr Osmond Martinez, CEO, Ministry of Economic Development
"That practically was done at cost because the Ministry of Infrastructure Development was the one who did it for us so we didn't get a contractor and if the engineers would explain all that they have done on this road and the Ministry of Infrastructure Development, I think it would have cost us around maybe 3 or 4 million Belize dollars."
"We want to pave it and not only this one but all other roads as Minister Mai clearly stated in his opening remarks that we are practically taking this road to paving standards and then Belize is a country, when it rains, it rains a lot, and we wouldn't want that three years from now or four years from now, this road starts to disappear and so as is we do have a proposal going to GCF whereby we have asked GCF for additional funding to upgrade the roads to paving standards and if that comes through, we might actually get the paving free of cost."
And this upgrade will go a long way in lowering the cost while increasing the quality of produce coming out of the village.
Santiago Juan, Assistant Zone Engineer, Cayo District
"Once its bruised the decomposition starts quickly, the release of sugars starts quickly and products can ripen before because of the release of ethylene gas, so it ripens before so the condition of the road has a lot to do with post harvest technology, post harvest technology then reflects on how much of the harvestable product gets to the consumer and that loss along the way is tremendous of which the road contributes a lot to that. Remember, it's also the time from the field to the market, not only the damaging of the product itself but the time. So a bumpy road or an inaccessible farm makes it even worse."
And on top of that, Valley of Peace may soon be able to transition from being just a farming community to also welcoming tourists.
Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"A new theme that being discussed around the world is agro-tourism, we have many beautiful farms in Belize that tourists would like to see and across the country, especially on the hillside. You know there are tourists that have never seen a bull ride or a rodeo, I have people at the Agriculture Show last year and was at the rodeo and they said they have never seen people ride a bull and they were very amazed. But there are people who have never seen a corn field, they have never seen agriculture, they have never seen pigs being fed, they have never seen how harvesting is done and so agro-tourism is an area that is rapidly catching on and I believe that Belize being what it is could benefit from agro-tourism."
The total length of the road is just under 5 miles.
