Last night on Channel 7's UNCUT, Minister Jose Mai said that he wasn't trying to pick a fight with ASR/BSI.
Rather, he was trying to help the farmers from letting the last of their crops go to waste. When host Jules Vasquez questioned him about sweating fever for Santander, Mai simply laughed the suggestion off.
Hon. Jose Mai - Minister of Agriculture "I didn't choose to pick a fight with BSI by no means. What we're trying to do in the Ministry of Agriculture is to ensure that no farmer will lose money because he is unable to deliver his cane to the mill because the mill does not have the capacity to mill all the cane."
Jules Vasquez "I noticed suddenly Jose Mai's tune is Sankey, he's singing a different Sankey in the House of Representative and he started to praise Santander. I know how politics works, it sounded like you were in league of Santander, like Santander is a supporter of Jose Mai and we know that you can accept campaign contribution. But we know how these things work so my counternarrative is Santander was a supporter of Jose Mai, completely legal, and Santander say, bwai make we help you with your campaign, and when Jose Mai was elected, Jose Mai said well make we reciprocate, make I get you into the northern market, make I get you some of this northern cane. How would you respond to that, Minister?"
Hon. Jose Mai "Talking like that is nonsense (laughs). But nevertheless Jules."
Jules Vasquez "It's not true?"
Hon. Jose Mai "Absolutely not. I am a supporter of ASR, I am a supporter of the cane farmer, I'm a supporter of Western Dairies, I'm a supporter Santander. I'm a supporter of the agro-industries that help contribute to the lives of Belizean people and to the farmers. When you're wrong, you're wrong, when you're right, you're right. What I think, Jules, is that they cannot continue doing things over and over and over the same way and expect a different result. Farmers have been losing cane every year, at one point I was left with 30 acres of unharvested cane. 30 acres. I felt like, I don't know what I was going to do. I was supposed to have clear up my back load that year, and I could not. Next year, my cane is no good, full of rat, it has low quality. I still cut it, but even the cutter no want cut it, it's woody, it has no sugar, you deliver to the mill, you deliver garbage. Dah bagass they want, dah bagass they get. So what we are saying to them, we can do this – this could go away tomorrow. Is ASR says to me, I will mill 1.2 million tons of sugar cane."
Jules Vasquez "But haven't they done 1.269?"
Hon. Jose Mai - Minister of Agriculture "They have done 1.3 at one point, but they don't do that every year. And if there's 1.3, there's still cane left out there. I suspect I am being conservative when I say 1.2, but if there is extra sugar cane, what do we do with it? Does the farmer lose it? If you tell me I will mill 1.2 million tons by the 15th of June, I have no problem. But if you noh mill it, you pay it."
