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Farmers from across the Cayo District gathered yesterday at the Belize Livestock Producers Association headquarters for the official closing ceremony of Phase Two of the Sustainable Livestock Project. The initiative, funded by The Nature Conservancy and implemented in partnership with the Belize Livestock Producers Association, aims to promote climate-smart and environmentally sustainable livestock production practices across Belize. The project was implemented in two phases. The first phase focused on training livestock technical officers and agricultural professionals from organizations including the Ministry of Agriculture, BLPA, Ya’axché Conservation Trust, the University of Belize, and Friends for Conservation and Development. Through a training of trainers approach, participants were equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to support cattle farmers in adopting sustainable livestock production practices. The second phase focused directly on farmers. Through the Farmer Field School Program, fifty cattle farmers from across the country received training in sustainable livestock production systems designed to improve productivity while protecting natural resources. The closing event marked the completion of the western cohort of the program and featured a guided tour of the BLPA Model Farm in Belmopan. Love news spoke with BLPA Project Manager, Gary Ramirez, who shared that participants observed demonstrations on rotational grazing, electric fencing systems, improved pasture management, and the application of screwworm treatment products.
Gary Ramirez, BLPA Project Manager: “We felt it necessary to try to engage the cattle producers, help them to realize and conduct activities such as farm planning, prepare them for pest and disease management, animal health, animal nutrition, pasture management, all the components that really involves the cattle business. And hopefully that will highlight some of the critical areas where savings could be had, reduce the amount of land that they are dependent on for cattle production. So the training component was all encompassing. It was a complete package that we presented to them. And the training itself took on what is known as a farmer field school approach, which we didn’t have the farmers in any classroom setting with projectors or anything like that. They met with the facilitator once per week on a Saturday, typically. At a particular farm they went through specific components of livestock management, all of those that I just mentioned. And so what happened yesterday was the culmination of all of that where we brought the farmers back together as one complete group. And then we also had the handing over of some equipment that, that they would have been trained to use and now we’re encouraging them to incorporate the use of those equipment on their farms.”
Thirty farmers from the Cayo District also received equipment and forage resources to assist them in implementing the sustainable practices learned throughout the training. Organizers say the project is helping farmers build more resilient livestock operations while encouraging responsible land management and environmental stewardship.
Gary Ramirez, BLPA Project Manager: “Ideally, the objective at the end of the day is to try to encourage as much farmers to start to transition to a more, to more of a silver pastoral system, which encourage the use of timber trees, improve pasture rotation, and a range of improved livestock production system. And so what this project seeks to do each of the farmers, each of the participating farmers is being challenged to select one acre of land on their property on their farm and start that transition process. That is what the training was geared for and that is what the equipment and the supplies that was handed over to them is geared for. So in the next few months, we will continue to do monitoring and evaluation and follow up with these farmers and to look at that one acre plot that they have committed to transitioning and hopefully they will see the benefit and start to add acre number two and acre number three and acre number five and acre number ten. And also at the same time, we want to go from 50 farmers to 100 farmers to 150 farmers to 5,000 farmers. So we’re really looking to replicate this as fast as possible and on as much farm as possible.”
The initiative was made possible through the collaborative efforts of The Nature Conservancy, the Belize Livestock Producers Association, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and New Growth Industries, the Belize Maya Forest Trust, and UB Central Farm.
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