Caneros block association’s 1.8 million dollar program
United Cane Farmers, the breakaway group of caneros from Orange Walk and Corozal districts were in court again today, this time to challenge the issue of the Quality Improvement Program. This is the controversial program that the management of the Belize Cane Farmers Association is trying to implement on the industry. Hubert Elrington, the lawyer for United Cane farmers was confident that he would have been granted an injunction to block the QIP. Well, apparently the management for B.C.F.A. was of the same view and in court today, the association voluntarily decided to rescind the QIP which would have taken control of eighteen million dollars granted by Fair Trade in Europe to help caneros improve their farms.
Hubert Elrington, Attorney, United Cane Farmers
“Today the C.E.O. of the Belize Cane Farmers Association indicated to the court that one; they were prepared to give an undertaking that the QIP agreement would not be signed or carried into execution until another annual general meeting was held. And they have scheduled that other general meeting for the twenty-third in Orange Walk. We have a fear that this whole set of proposals and agreements etcetera is designed to get seventy to eighty percent of farmers out of the industry and to put the industry in the hands of the real big cane farmers. I think they want to consolidate and make the industry more efficient I think that to do that you have to get rid of the small farmers and really go for big farms that have the possibilities of getting economies of scale. I think that that is the policy. But even if that is the policy, we have to tell the cane farmers don’t try to come with agreements that look alright on paper and then when you start implement them you have to send up the soldiers and the officers and you have to send up tear gas and you have to kill one or two ah them and we don’t want that to happen again.”
Elrington says he believes that the management of the Belize Cane Farmers Association will try again at the next general meeting to pass the QIP.
