Cane Farmers Want Recalculation of Percentage Split

Javier Keme

The commercial agreement expires in January of 2022. With the annual cane season slated to start in December, barring unexpected delays, the association is hopeful that an agreement can be reached.  Those hopes may just be pipe dreams if A.S.R./B.S.I. decides not to come to the table.  B.S.C.F.A. says it is also asking A.S.R./B.S.I. to recalculate how much their small farmers get from the gross proceeds.

Javier Keme, Chairman, B.S.C.F.A. Finance Committee

“Belize Sugar Industries have been saying the best share has been in place for decades, sixty-five percent for farmers and thirty-five percent for the mills. But there is a line item, that is in small letters, like with insurance policies, and those are the important factors that affect the insurance policy. We have the famous Appendix One that defines how this sixty-five, thirty- five is going to be done. That if you have a cake, sixty-five percent should be for the farmers and thirty-five should be for the mill, but it isn’t. There are costs, overhead expenses, marketing costs that have to be deducted, to come to a term that is on the appendix as the “net strip value”. Now what does this mean? That the sixty-five/thirty-five has remained for decades, but that little slices described in Appendix One as the marketing costs, over the year, have been increasing. The portion to split sixty-five/thirty- five have been getting smaller over the years.”