Recap of Agric 2022
The National Agriculture and Trade Show 2022, held over the weekend recorded approximately twenty-six thousand, eight hundred persons who attended the fiftieth anniversary of the event. While Saturday saw upwards of ten thousand persons entering the show grounds, Sunday had the highest turnout with fifteen thousand, plus visitors. These figures do not include invited guests and people who received courtesy passes. After two years of being unable to put off the show, Belizeans got the opportunity to take advantage of the best in agriculture, and trade product; there were also loads of entertainment, food and other attractions including the rodeo. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.
Duane Moody, Reporting
Agric returned with a bang over the weekend, beginning on Friday with its opening ceremony. And then on Saturday and Sunday, thousands of Belizeans converged on the showgrounds where every and anything in terms of agricultural products were on display and for sale. There was also the rodeo which is a crowd favorite; we’ll get to that excitement later, and the mechanical rides and games for the entire family. Intermittent showers left the ground muddy and visitors had to tread carefully while traversing the footpaths, but it was a great experience with almost everything back to normal. This year, micro, small and medium business had booths on the ground.
Jacklyn Burns
Jacklyn Burns, Owner, Mustard Mayhem
“I’m into gardening and I had a lot of excess peppers at one point and I said what am I going to do with this. And so I started experimenting with different recipes and that’s how we came up with Mustard Mayhem. It is coined spice made to entice and it’s really enticing. It’s been as far as Africa already. Today I am out here promoting it so that others can know about it. So far it is in Belize City at Golden Bay and I am just partnering with another Belizean who is doing Belizean products and I met her out here and we’re like can we exchange products. It’s also in Brodie’s Belmopan and also online and people can reach out to me. I am giving out business cards here. I do want to get it in other districts.”
Emanuel Salazar
Emanuel Salazar, Owner, Nice Snacks
‘We love chips – me and my wife – we love chips and one thing we realize that ina Belize, we have plantain chips, cassava chips, but they are not standards and quality so we try do the best we could so we bring good quality, high standards, nice packaging and nice flavors so we could not just complete locally but at some point we can go out there and show the world what Belize has.”
Duane Moody
“Let’s talk about the products that you guys have?”
Emanuel Salazar
“The cassava chips, we have the sour cream flavor, we have the original flavor, we have like a hint of habanero, a hint of lime and salt and we also have the hot. And the plantain chips we have the hot, the original flavor and the barbecue.”
Duane Moody
“Where is this being done?”
Emanuel Salazar
Emanuel Salazar
“It’s in San Ignacio. It is not a huge business but we are trying to do something from scratch and just to do it good.
What would agric be without those great deals on phones and gadgets? Samsung banners were strategically placed across the showground. The company was one of the major sponsors of the event this year and its distributor Cellular World brought out the big guns.
Karan Sabnani, Co-Owner, Cellular World
“This is one of our staple events. We’ve done something different this year for the Belizean public and we have Samsung officially in Belize with a first ever booth at the Agriculture and Trade Show which is something unique to strengthen the presence and the ties with the community to let them feel secure about this one-year warranty reliability efficiency when it comes to the brand. Besides Samsung, like always, we have great deals at our Cellular World booth. We’ve also introduced our new Cellular World business booth where we are catering to all B2B and corporate clients – Dell, APCs, Samsung, TCL TVs, laptops, desktops. So it is a one stop shop. Yo have yo Samsung experience, yo have yo Cellular World low prices more choices and yo have yo business solutions now.”
There was a wide variety of foods to choose from, but one food truck that stood out was Miss Debs.
Deborah Baldwin
Deborah Baldwin, Proprietor, Miss Debs Food Truck
“We went from just me and my son to now we have five regular employees.Not only because of the demand, but also the process. We have had to adjust our process. COVID knocked us hard and we had to learn how to go more local, find more local supplies and stuff like that. We have had to learn to adapt to environment, into service, into processes, into everything. We started doing agric eight years ago; we only missed the two years because they didn’t have it. We moved to a different location; we’ve modified our hours. We are just trying to meet our regular customer bases and the people that come here, they are coming from far.”
This year’s rodeo had a minor but laughable scare when a bull leapt over the perimeter fence and escaped into the crowd. People scrambled for safety, as the runaway bull barged through the throng. Ranchers set chase after the bull with lassos and it was later caught. Duane Moody for News Five.
