54th Annual Meeting of the Caribbean Food Crops Society
Belize is hosting the fifty-fourth annual Meeting of the Caribbean Food Crops Society. The five-day regional conference started today with the participation of various international and regional organizations. Stakeholders will be exchanging information on research and technology and in keeping with the theme, members are also tasked with advancing Caribbean food production, processing, and distribution through tourism. Representing Belize at the meeting was Minister of Agriculture, Godwin Hulse.
Godwin Hulse, Minister of Agriculture
“One of things that I continue to maintain is we have enough problems getting our products into those markets because they are just not perfect enough. Those are barriers to trade. There is nothing wrong with our thing but those are the barriers they put up. So when the visitor comes here as I use the old adage, ‘Mohammad has come to the mountain, let us not have his food follow him.” Let him come here and find the Belizean food and enjoy the Belizean food and love the Belizean food. And then maybe when he goes back he will demand it. That opens an avenue for us. That is the idea when we say feed the visitor. So we have three hundred and sixty thousand people, a million visitors. Feed the million.”
Hipolito Novelo
“Sir what happens after the five-day conference?”
Godwin Hulse
“People go back to their university, institutions. We at the Ministry will have a post review to see, to put together a portfolio of who is who and do follow ups in that line. We in the Ministry have brought it collectively together so it is no longer a Ministry with lots of little independents arms. We are all working together, pooling together. We are pushing.”
The conference ends on Friday.