Agriculture Minister says Assistance for Farmers on the Way

Godwin Hulse

In 2019, an extreme drought devastated crops in the north and south. Farmers lost millions of dollars and this prompted the government to roll out a financial aid package for farmers. The Food and Agriculture Ministry established the Belizean Agriculture Farm Registry, a list of established farmers that received financial assistance. One point one million dollars were made available to assist more than one thousand cattle farmers and more than six hundred vegetable farmers. This month a more severe drought developed in several countries in the Caribbean. In Belize, a short-term drought, until the end of May, is evolving in west-central Belize. The adverse effects of this extreme drought are already being felt with fires burning out of control. Farmers are expected to also be affected which is why the Ministry of Food and Agriculture had made an early application for a twenty-five million dollars loan from the World Bank to assist farmers. Minister Godwin Hulse spoke during the Senate sitting on Tuesday about the assistance that farmers would receive during the COVID-19 Pandemic and the imminent drought. 

Godwin Hulse, Minister of Food and Agriculture

“But let’s get to COVID. Do you know that because of the drought the ministry engaged the World Bank for a loan of twenty five million US dollars? I mentioned that in this Senate already and that twenty five million dollars is well advanced. These institutions take time but we are working that fund for drought assistance to the farmers to be able to improve their ability to maintain their crops and their animals through any subsequent dry period. That money will not be available maybe until September or October. It’s beyond our control the speed at which the World Bank works, but at the same time there is a twenty one million dollar which comes from the Climate Resilient Restructure Program called CRRP and I don’t mean the gang crip. It’s called CRRP and the Prime Minister mentioned repeatedly that that money was going to be expedited to be part of this social assistance. I encouraged him – Prime Minister the farmers need assistance for COVID as well. They are not begging, they don’t have their hands stretched, but if they can’t sell their products and their vegetables rotten, they won’t get any money, so they can’t plant back so we need some assistance for them. He has agreed that some fourteen million dollars out of that fund will go into that which hopefully will be available no later than three weeks at the outset maybe four weeks, from that part of the fund while the twenty five million for the drought remains intact. So it’s not accurate to say that there is no assistance and nothing is being done. Finally we engaged the Central Bank with all the stakeholders in the farming community to look at what we could do as a relief for those who had loans.”