A million pounds of pineapple rotting in Toledo fields
Experts tell us that the problem of world food shortages has less to do with production than it does with distribution; that is, connecting the existing food with the people who need it. That difficulty is being demonstrated tonight in the Toledo District where entire fields of tasty and nutritious fruit are being left to rot. News Five’s Janelle Chanona travelled south to find out why.
Janelle Chanona
“The sugar loaf is one of the sweetest varieties of pineapple available in Belize but this juicy goodness is leaving a sour taste in the mouths of farmers. That’s because they’re in danger of losing more than a million pounds of pineapple.”
In the small village of Trio in the Toledo District, more than a hundred acres of land have been cultivated to produce pineapple. But this week the acrid stench of fermentation began to emanate from the fields as the farmers have refused to harvest the fruit. For the last five years the forty-five members of the Buenos Amigos Cooperative have been selling pineapples to Citrus Products of Belize Limited for fifteen cents a pound. But this season, the producers demanded a ten cent increase from the factory, citing rising costs in fuel and fertilizers.
Jose Mauricio Hernandez, President, Buenos Amigos Cooperative
“We have children in primary school, children in college. And we have to maintain them. And I think they will have to stop because we can’t sell the product at this price. They have to have a conscience and help us. All the pineapple producers need to maintain their families. No one else will work to support our families. We want to say we can work to support our families.”
Janelle Chanona
“How much money are you going to lose?”
Rolando Perez, Pineapple Producer
“I am going to lose big but what can I do? We aren’t getting the ten cents extra. If we try to send the fruit by truck, with the cost of gasoline now, it will be like seventy, eighty cents a pound to transport the product. We have to pay the reapers twenty-five dollars to harvest. It’s better to lose it all.”
Belter Garcia, Pineapple Producer
“We need many pesticides, fertilizers. We have to work hard so we can get some pine. I think if they can find a way to help us by talking to the people in the company or I think the Government have to find a way to help the farmers.”
Victor Paulino, Senior Cooperative Officer, Toledo
“As you look about all the pine are spoiling in the field because at that price, they cannot sell it and that’s one of their cries at the moment.”
And according to Victor Paulino, the Senior Cooperative Officer in Toledo, the farmers will leave the fruit to rot if the factory doesn’t buy the pineapples for twenty-five cents a pound.
Victor Paulino
“It’s sad to say it that way but they will lose if they start harvesting to sell it at that price, they will lose much more so this is where we are the moment. They say it can be imported at a lower price but right now this is what we have here in Belize and this is the price we have to deal with.”
Henry Canton, C.E.O., C.P.B.L.
“Pineapple is just like citrus, it’s just like sugar. It’s a commodity and I cannot pay the growers more than I can process it for and sell it into a marketplace because it won’t be good business and what I’ll be doing is subsidizing pineapple on the backs of citrus growers and that’s not going to work.”
The current plight of pineapple producers is the budding industry’s first major crisis. In 2003, it was the Ministry of Agriculture who brought together the processors and the farmers to encourage pineapple production. There are several types of pineapples in Belize but processors say they made it clear the Smooth Cayenne was their preference. Besides not having any thorns, the Smooth Cayenne produces a clear juice and more of it than the other varieties. The problem is the Smooth Cayenne is less tolerant to diseases and pests so it requires more inputs. The farmers favour the Sugar Loaf and Habanero because they’re cheaper to grow. Because seeds for the Cayenne weren’t available to farmers five years ago, C.P.B.L. agreed to start processing the Sugar Loaf and Habanero pineapples but says it did so on the understanding that the farmers would gradually gravitate toward the Cayenne. But today only five percent of the pineapples produced in Belize are the Smooth Cayenne.
Henry Canton
“I don’t want to appear to be holding the farmers across the barrel because I am not. We’ve prepared the small facility that we have to process pineapples, we are going to keep it open. And if the farmers are willing to accept fifteen and seventeen cents they can bring it. If I am open for those periods of time and enough pineapples does not come in, then I am going to have to close it down.”
According to Henry Canton, Chief Executive Officer of C.P.B.L., the company’s primary concern is orange and grapefruit processing. He says the factory agreed to squeeze pineapple into the production line between mid May and early June because farmers promised that they would be able to grow the right type in significant numbers.
Henry Canton
“I have another problem in that in order to place pineapple for processing, I have to stop processing citrus which right now is a critical time because for us, the season has been very late. So every stop that I have to make in processing citrus creates a problem for me with my citrus growers. If I was to be realistic with the whole pineapple issue, I would not be processing pineapple until July if I was going to be efficient about doing it but by then they would have lost half their crop.”
Canton also claims that on top of growing the wrong type, the farmers aren’t being efficient. The farmers in Trio practice the traditional milpa cultivation and while the fields boast plenty of fruit, Canton says other producers in Belize have been able to triple the yield per acre.
Fulton Barry Palacio, District Agriculture Coordinator, Toledo District
“It breaks our heart to see and hence the reason why we have linked up with the Cooperative Department, the farmers and C.P.B.L. in trying to broker an agreement to see if this situation can be avoided. We really wouldn’t want our farmers to become discouraged and come out of the business. I think this is part of developmental problems in that before 2003, nobody was processing pineapples and now that we have started, we have to keep iron out the kinks as we go along.”
Part of the Ministry of Agriculture’s response to the pineapple plight has included exploring the possibility of establishing an independent processing facility and looking for export opportunities in the fresh fruit market. MoA is also propagating seeds of a new type of pineapple that would satisfy consumers and the processors.
Clifford Martinez, District Agriculture Coordinator, Stann Creek District
“What we’ve done in the Ministry of Agriculture is that we’ve bought a hybrid variety of the Smooth Cayenne which is the MD2, which would have been produced to tolerate the heat, the stress and the saturation and the pests so that being a dual type pineapple, we could have provided for the local market, which is our Belizean market, and also for the processing plant.”
But getting to the stage of distributing the seeds to the farmers is still months away and talks between the farmers and the factory are in a stalemate. So at a time when other Caribbean countries are grappling with food shortages, Belize will witness the absolute waste of hundreds of thousands of perfectly good pineapples unless producers and processors can somehow reach an eleventh hour agreement. Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona.
