Minister of Agriculture Hon. Jose Abelardo Mai, Speaker of the House, Hon. Valerie Woods, Special Envoy H.E Rossana Briceño toured the Agro-processing Unit at Central Farm

Women and small farmers are now gaining new entrepreneurship skills as they learn how to add shelf life to their farm produce, to earn more profits by turning their raw farm produce into value-added products, at the Agro-processing unit of the Central Farmer Research Development and Innovation Center.

Special Envoy for Families and Children, Mrs Rossana Briceño witnessed how the center is developing new products for the domestic market with the potential to also develop into exports, when she led the women of the House of Representatives and the Senate on a tour of the facility last Friday morning, November 26.

The center has been teaching other small farmers how to get into the business of making soy sauce and pepper sauce through better packaging, labeling and marketing. Other farmers have been taught how to turn their soursop fruits, which they can’t sell on the local market, into pulp to deliver to larger processors for making soursop juice, explained the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Hon. Jose Abelardo Mai.

Similarly, the banana farmers stood to take a huge loss from thousands of boxes of bananas which did not meet market standard for export, as foreign buyers are much fickler about the quality and appearance of the fruit they buy. The Center has helped them salvage the food value of their crop, by processing the fruit into dried fruit snacks and into banana flour, to be made into banana bread and a nutritious fruit drink. The ministry’s fundamental philosophy has been to make Belize self-sufficient in food by producing local products to replace import, and Minister Mai said his ministry is confident that their banana flour will meet the nutrition standards to replace the “Incaparena” soy and corn flour mix, which the Ministry of Education has been importing as a food supplement for the schools feeding program. This would be an important step forward for the children and the farmers.

This was Special Envoy Briceño’s interest in her tour of the facility, how these value-added products might help the sustainability of the schools feeding programme. Funding is limited, and so she was investigating how to enlist the support of the Ministries of Health and Wellness and Agriculture to partner with the Education ministry to help feed schoolchildren at least one solid meal per day. She noted that many families have been struggling with unemployment during the pandemic. The parents are eager for their children to return to the classrooms for in person instruction, so that their children might be well fed, through the Education ministry’s “Early Start” schools feeding program. Briceño is also the principal of St Peter’s Anglican School in Orange Walk Town, which has had a feeding program since 1991. She lamented at times seeing her students vomiting from an empty stomach with nothing to throw up, because they had not eaten from the night before. Children cannot learn on an empty stomach, if the system fails them in the kitchen, she cautioned. Her concern was to taste-test the quality of the snacks, the jams, jellies, fruit preserves and food produced to determine if they were something the children would readily eat.

Speaker of the House Hon. Valerie Woods led the members of the Belize Parliamentary Alliance against Hunger and Malnutrition (BPAHM) who accompanied Briceño. She said the bipartisan fight against hunger was begun under the previous administration in April 2016, with the support of the regional “Meso-America Sin Hambre” initiative of the Mexican International Development Cooperation Agency (AMEXCID), which was also funded by the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Temporary Relocation of the Ministry of Agriculture Policy Unit

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security & Enterprise would like to inform the public that the Policy Unit under the department of Agriculture has been temporary relocated to H.M Queen Elizabeth the Second Boulevard at the Ministry of Natural Resources building in Belmopan. The Unit can be contacted at phone number 828-5096 or 822-2241.

Minister Mai travels to Mérida, Mexico signs technical Cooperation Agreements

Minister of Agriculture travelled to Mérida to sign agreements between INIFAP and the Central Farm Research, Development, and Innovation Department. This MOU included the signing of agreements with SADER which came after a series of high-level meetings between Minister Mai and Mexico’s Agriculture Secretary Dr. Víctor Manuel Villalobos Arámbula in July and more recently with Ingeniera Lourdes Cruz, Coordinator for International Affairs in the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER) during the State Visit made by the Prime Minister John Briceño to Mexico.

The agreement with INIFAP was to get support for in vitro production of coconut seedlings, support for pitahaya and soursop as well sign technical cooperation agreement with the Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán (CICY) in Mérida, Yucatán, for agriculture technicians to train at INIFAP in Mexico.

The agreements between Belize and Mexico include scientific investigation and genetic improvement of fruit trees and livestock. These fruit trees include pitahaya (dragon fruit), coconut, pineapple, lime, and oranges as priority commodities.  Overall the MOU with SADER includes areas of cooperation in capacity building, training, research, and the facilitation of trade. Under that falls the component of SENASICA and BAHA.

2021 World Food Day Celebrated Virtually 

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization today virtually celebrated World Food Day at the Yo Creek Agriculture Station in the Orange Walk District.

This year’s World Food Day was celebrated under the theme ‘Our Actions are our future ─ better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life.’ The theme raises awareness of the need for supporting the transformation to more efficient, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable agri-food systems.

In his remarks, Hon. Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture, stated that the mandate of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise of Belize is to continue the endeavor to improve security, quality, and affordability of food in a sustainable manner that will take into consideration the conservation of the environment. To do so there is need for the continuous strengthening of collaboration with partners in development to be able to reach out to rural and urban areas, prioritizing the most vulnerable.

Present at the event were Prime Minister Hon. John Briceño and H.E. Rossana Briceño, Special Envoy for the Development of Families and Children. In her remarks, Mrs. Briceño challenged all to join in the fight against malnutrition and to take bolder steps in that direction. Prime Minister Briceño also spoke about the problems of malnutrition and food insecurity, mentioning some of the steps taken by government to deal with these problems, such as the Parliamentary Alliance Against Hunger and Malnutrition, and the focus of several ministries to ensure problems with access to proper nutrition are eradicated. Prime Minister Briceño said that with proper harnessing of resources, Belize should be able to eliminate food distribution problems that affect school-aged children.

One of the other highlights of the event was the recognition of Minister Mai as a Food Hero, for the steps he has taken to ensure food security and scarcity and malnutrition are mitigated.

The day ended with a tour of different booths featuring agricultural displays and products from different sectors in agriculture.

MATCHING GRANT FUND AGREEMENT – SIGNING CEREMONY

The Government of Belize (GOB), with financing of BZ$40 Million from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF), has embarked on a six-year Programme, Resilient Rural Belize (RRB), which aims to minimize the impacts of climatic and economic events on small farmers while supporting sustainable market access for their produce.

The Programme Management Unit (PMU), acting through the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development and Investment (Lead Programme Agency) and working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise, has overall responsibility for programme implementation, including the administration and implementation of the Programme’s Matching Grant Fund (MGF), the main objective of which is to support the achievement of the Programme’s objectives by co-financing investments that would improve, in volume and quality, small farmer agricultural production and safeguard food security in the context of existing and projected climate change effects. Working with Producers’ Organizations, the Programme will provide support for the development of a business plan, which shall identify proposed investments, including technical assistance and capacity building, aimed at achieving the above objectives, and which shall be used as the basis for accessing support from the Matching Grant Fund (MGF).

On Monday, July 5, 2021, the Government of Belize and the Valley of Peace Farmers Association Holdings Limited has signed an Agreement, which will allow for the provision of support to the Association by the Government of Belize through the Programme’s Matching Grant Fund for investments identified in the second business plan to have been prepared and approved under the Programme. These investments include the construction of a climate resilient office, packing and storage center with equipment, irrigation equipment (water pump, water tanks, PVC piping, hoses & sprinklers) construction of climate smart seedling nursery with equipment and the provision of technical assistance and capacity building geared toward improving governance, administration, financial operations and marketing; introducing climate smart agricultural techniques; and improving production scheduling, planning and product quality.

Valley of Peace Farmers Association Holdings Limited registered as an Association has been engaged with the RRB programme and the Department of Co-operative over the past two years and to date many of the members have been trained on numerous topics by the Department of Co-operative. The Association is based in Valley of Peace, Cayo District, and produce a variety of vegetables. They believe that they have a competitive advantage with cabbage, lettuce and onions, and thus the business proposal concentrates on improving capacity and market opportunities of these crops. The total numbers of beneficiaries to be positively affected by the proposed investment is estimated at 185 persons, including 28 women and 80 youths.