Sugar Industry Sees $61 Million Loss and Major Drop in Production

The last sugar crop was extremely challenging as the industry saw tremendous losses in revenues.  For this year, the industry is seeing a decrease in output of 160 thousand tonnes of sugarcane.  The data shows 24 tonnes less in sugar production and 61.6 million dollars decline in revenues.  Of this revenue loss, the farmers’ loss was close to forty million dollars.  According to the Minister of Agriculture, Jose Abelardo Mai, the government is looking at ways to mitigate the effects on farmers and the industry.  He noted that with the fusarium threat on sugar is adding to the challenges.

Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture: “So there’s lot less money for the farmers this year in sugar cane. The price for it now is almost $30 less than it was last year. So the price went down. Less money for the farmers because of the quality, less sugar. And so we’re in a very difficult position this year. The Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Finance are working closely together to see how best we can help the farmers to mitigate the effects.  We’re not the only country in the position. If you have seen the news last night, Mexican cane farmers right now are demonstrating against their government because they believe they’re not getting the attention of the government. They are asking for support from the government to mitigate two things; the  decreasing price to them and support for Fusarium. Our price is at $58, it’s very low compared to last year. It’s $30 less per ton. So the farmers are even finding it difficult to buy the inputs to control the disease. We are using a cocktail which was developed by CIRDI based on what the Mexicans are using and based on our experience and our technicians’ advice and we started spraying last week. The cost of spraying per acre is close to $300 or there about $300. So we, the Ministry of Agriculture is putting $200 and the farmers putting $100 so that we can do a pilot trial for about 2,000 acres. We started spraying last week and we hope to start to see the effects of the first application by next week. We will see if the  intensity is reducing. And then we have three more applications of other biological control products. Mexico, we saw levels of infection in Mexico ranging from one to five, that’s how they have it classified  grade one to grade five, grade one being less affected and grade five being severely affected to the point where the plant is dying or is dead. We saw different levels of infection in Mexico. The good thing we saw is that we saw level five infections being bush hogged, burnt and then the plants that are coming in the new plants that are coming up were treated and these plants are signs of recovery. As a matter of fact we saw a field that was ready to harvest again after treatment.”

The fusarium situation in the sugar industry is not unique to Belize.  Next door in Mexico, there are similar challenges as explained by Minister Mai.

Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture: “They are asking for support from their government to mitigate two things, the decrease in price to them and support for Fusarium. We saw levels of infection in Mexico ranging from one to five, that’s how they have it classified  grade one to grade five, grade one being less affected and grade five being severely affected to the point where the plant is dying or is dead. We saw different levels of infection in Mexico. The good thing we saw is that we saw level five infections being bush hogged, burnt and then the plants that are coming in the new plants that are coming up were treated and these plants are signs of recovery. As a matter of fact we saw a field that was ready to harvest again after treatment.”

The fusarium is also a threat to the banana industry which is being addressed with the help of the Embassy of the Republic of China (Taiwan)./