Eight Months Later, Resuming the Cattle Trade with Guatemala
Eight months after the illegal cattle trade with Guatemala was suspended by the previous U.D.P. administration, it has resumed. But by then, millions of dollars had already been lost. The demand for cattle is high and livestock producers are now trying to return to some sense of normalcy. Since last Thursday, close to a thousand heads of cattle have been taken to the western border and sold, reviving part of the agricultural industry. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.
Duane Moody, Reporting
Belize is a huge supplier of livestock to the region, namely Guatemala, which in turn sells to Mexico and the processed meat is ten exported to the United States. But for almost seven to eight months now, since the COVID-19 pandemic began taking root in Belize, ranchers have not been able to trade their cattle, losing millions of dollars in revenue.
Joseph Friessen Jr.
Joseph Friessen Jr., Cattle Trader, Spanish Lookout
“For eight months, we have not been able to trade cattle like we used to before and that has caused the prices of cattle to go down a lot. And I would say there was definitely millions of dollars loss in cattle sales and the prices dropping a lot because the local market doesn’t consume all the beef that we produce. They only consume maybe twenty-five percent, thirty percent of the beef that we consume. With this COVID-19, the borders have been closed and they have not been coming in so it got complicated where we couldn’t move the cattle the way we wanted to and the cows got overstock and people couldn’t sell their cattle and all these people were trying to sell a few head of cattle because they needed the money cause times were hard.”
Cattle trader, Joseph Friessen is essentially the middle man in the entire processing chain of purchasing cattle from about a hundred small farmers and supplying them to the Guatemalan market. His farm in Spanish Lookout is ideal for accommodating a few hundred heads of cattle being prepared for export.
Joseph Friessen Jr.
“Been doing it for twenty years now and my dad started this about fifty years ago and we’ve been buying cattle from the little farmers around the country, and mostly Cayo district. It’s just to provide the farmers a way to sell their cattle when they need to sell.”
Back in August, then Minister of Agriculture, Godwin Hulse announced that cross-border cattle trade with Guatemala was formalized, several months after the illegal export of livestock was suspended due to concerns of COVID-19. The informal trading of cattle into Melchor, through Bullet Tree Falls, had been in place for decades. While this lucrative arrangement saw hundreds of cows being ferried across the western border, there were concerns about money laundering, since payments were made strictly in cash.
Godwin Hulse
Godwin Hulse, Former Minister of Agriculture [August 27th, 2020]
“This ministry and the Government of Belize absolutely, absolutely, unconditionally opposes any attempt to ship cattle illegally or informally. That door has been closed, we cannot try to smuggle animals into our neighbouring republic for several reasons. I communicated with the minister of Guatemala and all his team; at the highest sanitary and phyto-sanitary level, BAHA worked with MAGA, those are all the veterinarians and technical people and we were able to make the first official shipment of twenty-seven animals into Guatemala.”
But that has not worked well for farmers.
Joseph Friessen Jr.
“I would want to encourage that formal market as well because that is the proper way to do it. But there are challenges like when people have only a few head of cattle, you have to quarantine your cattle for three weeks and you gotta separate them from the other cattle, but people don’t have a pasture where they can separate them. When BAHA comes to check those cattle and inject them, there is a cost of maybe about nine hundred dollars to ship one load of cattle out of the country and that comes down with your price when you do all that cost. We did a couple loads through the formal market process, but there is also this problem with money transfer into this country. Wiring money is a very difficult challenge to do it. We tried it a couple times, and apparently it didn’t go through the way it should go through. I think there are a lot of little stuff that needs to be worked out, but it can be done.”
But since November twelfth, close to a thousand heads of cattle have been exported, following a directive from the newly installed P.U.P. administration.
Jose Mai
Jose Mai, Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise [November 17th, 2020]
“The day that the Prime Minister was sworn, Prime Minister John Briceño, on the following day cattle started moving out. That has brought tremendous financial relief to the cattle farmers of this country, some who are preparing for bankruptcy already, some who had laid off their workers, some who were preparing to get rid of everything.”
Friessen says that due to the COVID-19 reality on the ground, they do not cross into Guatemala anymore.
Joseph Friessen Jr.
“We don’t have the Guatemalan trucks coming in so we take these cattle to the border line; we put it in a corral where they come later and pick it up. So we don’t interact with the Guatemalans. We leave the cows in the corral, they come and pick it up. We don’t go across, they don’t come across; it is right on the line and there is a holding pen. So it works pretty good now. The people are very happy that they can sell their cattle again.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
