Toledo farmers will be paid more for their rice
Yesterday we reported from the Toledo District on an overabundance of pineapples that are, as I speak, rotting in the fields. Tonight, a bit further south, it’s a different story. This time it’s rice but instead of too much, the problem is too little. Fifteen years ago Toledo was the nation’s major supplier of rice but a combination of economic factors has reduced the size of the crop and number of farmers to the point that in 2007 that district accounted for only twelve percent of Belize’s total output. The majority is now supplied by mechanised growers at Blue Creek in Orange Walk. The low tech Toledo rice is marketed by the Belize Marketing and Development Corporation, formerly known as the Marketing Board, which in view of the diminished supply, is now limiting rice purchases to two sacks per person, ten for large supermarkets. In an effort to spur production in the south, the Ministry of Agriculture has announced a forty percent increase in the price that will be paid to Toledo farmers for their next crop. It is hoped that the rise from twenty-five to thirty-five cents per pound for rice paddy will bring back farmers who had abandoned the crop as unprofitable. According to Roque Mai, Managing Director of the B.M.D.C., without a price increase Toledo rice production would drop to zero.
Roque Mai, Managing Director, B.M.D.C.
“For paddy production, increased price in paddy production and we don’t have other choice than to give them that because they put it at us—even the Blue Creek farmers—it’s that they said you either give us the price or some of them will move back from the rice production and divert to maybe planting tomatoes, vegetables and etcetera.”
Of course, what is good news for farmers is not necessarily the same for consumers. The new retail price of rice, whether from Toledo or Blue Creek, is a dollar twenty-five per pound while shopkeepers buying wholesale will pay one dollar and five cents for the southern product and one ten for the northern variety. Mai said that the price hikes for mechanised rice are attributable to skyrocketing costs of fuel, fertilizer and other agrochemicals.
