BELMOPAN, Belize, Prime Minister John Briceño has welcomed the one-year interim agreement reached between the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association (BSCFA) and the American Sugar Refinery/Belize Sugar Industries Ltd (ASR/BSI) that allowed for the start of the new crop sugar season that the authorities hope will yield an estimated 1.3 million tons of sugarcane for milling.
The new crop season got underway on Tuesday and Alfredo Ortega, the chairman of the BSCFA Committee of Management, said the interim agreement allows the government to amend existing laws to prevent the kinds of stalemate that threaten to frustrate the sugar industry. The two main stakeholders in the sugar industry had been at loggerheads. After almost a year of back and forth, in late October, both parties finally agreed to a mediator’s services following the current agreement’s expiration in January this year.
In his New Year’s Day address to the nation, Prime Minister Briceño said, “our people and communities are infused with optimism for the first time in a generation.
“The worst of the COVID pandemic is behind us. More Belizeans than ever are working. The national economy is expanding at a record pace, and the nation is deepening its democracy and re-examining its constitution.”
He said it is clear to him that a new national pride enlivens homes, workplaces, and the public sphere and that “this positive energy will suffuse 2023 with spectacular rewards.
“A few days ago, stakeholders in the all-important sugar sector bridged their differences so that we expect a bumper crop in both volumes and price. To make this happen my administration expanded our fuel and road repairs subsidies supported improving crop yields as a priority and in a major first will facilitate substantial fertilizer support to farmers, thanks to the government of Morocco.”
Briceño said that the positive breakthrough in the sugar industry “is but one of many successes in a surging agricultural industry where the export of livestock and grains swell with each passing month and where a nascent coconut sector is poised for a boom in production and where stakeholders are working to restore the luster of the citrus industry.”
Meanwhile, the ASR/BSI’s Cane Farmers Relations Manager, Olivia Avilez, says the Sugar Cane Production Committee (SCPC) estimated that nearly 1.3 million tons of sugarcane would be available for milling.
“The SCPC estimated around 1.3 million tons and a little more. Our perspective on that is, again, we have an inflated production estimate every year. And again, this year, we think that there has been a lot of impacts from flooding and stand-over cane which will not yield production estimate,” said Avilez.
“And we’ve also had some impacts from frog hoppers, which are one of the key pests in the industry. So, with all of that, our estimate is around 1.15 million tons of cane,” she said, noting the delays already experienced before the start of the season.
“When we lose, it’s not just days. We lose the amount of cane. For example, if we had started milling on three or five, we would have lost that by six or by eight, whichever number you use. Worse, when you don’t have your crop in the cycle, you lose the sugar and impact the following yield.
For example, right now, the cane is already impacted. You have the stand-over cane that we didn’t mill last year because we had a late start again. That was several weeks. So, you have that cane that’s already impacted, that’s going to start to come into the factory.
“So, when you’re calculating or looking at the impact of not starting a crop season in time, you have to look at all of that factors,” Avilez said.
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