Wiped out by Iris, banana industry seeks recovery
It’s the biggest economic activity in the Toledo District and one of the nation’s major earners of foreign exchange. But in less than ninety minutes on the night of October eighth, Belize’s banana industry was put out of business. Today, journalists were given a tour of the affected areas and as Janelle Chanona found out, the task ahead will not be easy.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
“In the time it took Iris to cross Belize, every single banana farm in the south was levelled. Authorities estimate as much as fifty-seven million U.S. dollars will be lost in revenues.”
Zaid Flores, Manager, Banana Growers Association
“We have suffered serious damages in bananas, but we’re coming back and the work has started already.”
Since Iris made landfall more than a week ago, banana workers have had the laborious task of wading through the debris of fallen plants, trying to salvage the next generation, hidden beneath. But these efforts will take plenty of the green stuff…cash that is.
Zaid Flores
“It will take money and it will take some patience. We have met and discussed what measures we will take and we have some people on the ground already looking at the technical aspect of the business, to see what’s the easiest and quickest way we could get back into production.”
Industry insiders are hoping that the plant’s natural survival instincts, and a little help from man, will speed up the rehabilitation process.
Sam Mathias, Technical Advisor, B.G.A.
“The mother plants have to cleared from the fields. You then have to concentrate all your energy, fertiliser and cultivation techniques have to be transferred to the daughter. This plant will shoot maybe in four months time, similar to this one, except standing up. This can be harvested in maybe seven to eight months. The problem is there is no money coming in for those eight months, so everything that is done will have to be done on the small amount of cash that’s left.”
The lack of a cash flow will negatively impact the estimated twenty-five hundred people employed by the industry. However, Flores maintains that job cuts will be used as a last resort.
Zaid Flores
“People need to not only continue with their lives, but we need to continue with the farms; we need the workers. So we’ve been discussing different plans and we have made a commitment to keep most of the workers. We have explained to workers that they have to be flexible at this time because the efforts will mostly include cleanup and replanting and so people will have flexible. But we have to be real too that at the end of the day some workers will be displaced.”
For now, the banana workers are being paid approximately forty dollars to clear an acre. Most of the fruit that has been left behind is not salvageable, either because they are too young or because of severe bruising, caused by the strong winds beating the bananas together.
Sam Mathias
“Certainly there is some fruit that could be salvaged, in other words, it would be nice and fat with pulp inside. The problem is that there isn’t that much of it and to send a worker into the field just to try to find a bunch that’s salvageable would take a lot of work and who’s going to pay for it?”
The fruit from the fields, and the more than three hundred thousand boxes of bananas that were being housed at the heavily damaged facility at the Big Creek Port, have been donated to various communities in the area. According to B.G.A. technical advisor Sam Mathias, such a disaster could not have come at a worse time.
Sam Mathias
“Unfortunately, we were just coming up to the peak of the annual production. And the next shipment out we were hoping to ship one hundred thousand, forty-pound cartons, which would have been the highest shipment for the year. Obviously, we won’t be shipping anything out for the rest of the year.”
Growers estimate the earliest shipments could be made in February from farms in the South Stann Creek. However, the banana plantations further south won’t see harvest until at least June.
During the interim, there is the question of what will happen to the quota of bananas Belize was shipping out.
Zaid Flores
“There are licenses that Belize fruit generated and those licenses actually is limited for A.C.P. fruit. There is a shortage of A.C.P. fruit on the market right now, so we will have to get into some discussion with Fyffes, and the European Union of course, to see if these licenses of Belize could be used on some other Latin fruit and whether they could be some income trickle back to us here in Belize.”
Meanwhile Fyffes, the company that markets Belize’s bananas, has already promised not to cancel Belize’s contract in the wake of the disaster.
Hugo Oviedo, Fyffes Representative, Belize
“We have assured the B.G.A. that there is a contract still outstanding with them and we are still standing behind it. Belize has the full support of Fyffes.”
According to Flores, only a couple farms were insured and only for small amounts. Most of the money banana growers need will have to be borrowed. Reporting for News 5, I am Janelle Chanona.
Representatives of the banana industry in Honduras will be arriving in Belize next week to assist the Belize growers with rehabilitation techniques. Viewers will recall that Honduran banana growers lost most of their crop when Hurricane Mitch unleashed it’s fury in 1998.
