The papaya industry on the rebound

It was devastated by Hurricane Dean three years ago but the papaya industry is now well poised to recover. Set in the north, Fruta Bomba has been exporting about a hundred thousand tons of the fruit on a weekly basis to the United States and Canada. It is a main source of employment for hundreds that work the fields, process, pack the delicate fruits and get them off to the secured markets. News Five’s Isani Cayetano has a look at this industry, from the planting of the seeds to their eventual export.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

Belize’s agrarian sector has over the years seen the rise of citrus, banana and sugar as its chief export commodities.  While much has been said about the level of production within these businesses very little is known about the papaya industry, a fledgling trade that was introduced locally over a decade and a half ago. Fruta Bomba, a fairly large company operating in San Joaquin Village, employs close to a thousand workers at various stages in production.

The arduous process of growing papayas begins several miles south of Corozal Town at a nursery where John Daniels oversees several hundred acres worth of seedlings that are planted in carefully supervised beds.

John Daniels, Production Manager, Fruta Bomba

john daniels

“This is where it all begins and here is where the seed is sown into trees and it is held in here for the germination process to thereabout five weeks.  After five weeks it’s taken to the field where it’s planted. We don’t use herbicides.  Earlier you saw the guys them rooting up the weeds.  They were doing hand weeding and that’s the way to eliminate the weeds that come out on the ground because it is enclosed and then, you know, you have the possibility of herbicide drift that would burn the little plants because they are very delicate at that stage you know.”

Once fully germinated the sprouts are transplanted to another twenty acre spread where they are watered and weeded regularly until they blossom.

Isani Cayetano

“Now John what we have here in this field are plants that were transplanted from the nursery a few miles away and these seem to be two to two and a half months old.  Can you speak to us a bit about how the process is in terms of selecting whether or not these are hermaphrodite or male or female papaya plants?”

John Daniels

“Yeah that’s correct.  That’s why four is planted because we don’t, we can’t determine the gender, the sex of the plant when it’s at the nursery stage or at the seedling stage as such.  So whenever it’s brought out here it’s planted that four plants per site we call it, thereafter the two and a half months then it’s going to start flowering.  Then based on the shape of the flower we’re going to determine if it’s going to be a hermaphrodite or it’s going to be a female.  Then we have a crew that comes in and remove the females and the hermaphrodite is left to bear fruits.  These are the trees that bear exportable fruits.”

At its export stage however, the industry, according to Henry Warrington, is still developing.

henry warrington

Henry Warrington, Operations Manager, Fruta Bomba

“We only export a small amount of fruit as compared to Mexico for example but it’s a highly risky business.  It’s a good business, it can be lucrative but at the same time it’s very easy to make financial losses.”

In August of 2007 the papaya industry suffered its worst loss to date; a massive shortfall that saw millions of dollars in investment literally gone with the wind.

Isani Cayetano

“It is not difficult to imagine that less than three years ago this entire acreage of land was flattened by gale storm winds brought about by Hurricane Dean.  As a matter of fact majority of the Corozal District was inundated by water and damaged by wind.  The industry that felt it the most was the papaya industry.”

Henry Warrington

“Hurricane Dean destroyed the papaya industry in Belize about completely about two years ago and the company as it is and some of the other growers are only recuperating at this moment.  That’s what makes it a very risky business.  The papaya tree cannot withstand a lot of rain or a lot of wind.  It’s not like a cane or an orange tree that can withstand a lot of the elements.  Once you get a hurricane you are basically out of production for two years and you‘re not gonna get anything back before that time.”

Two and a half years later the industry is rebounding rapidly.  At Belize Food Packers Ltd., a subsidiary of Fruta Bomba, it is business as usual.  Inside this sanitized environment an army of three hundred employees carries out a variety of duties.  Fruits that are harvested from the fields are brought to the factory and unloaded from delivery trucks then carried off to a cooling facility where they await processing.

Once in the manufacturing line workers waste no time in selecting which papayas are suitable for processing.  The fruits are then sent upstream through a pressurized washer where they are rid of flies and other harmful agents that may cause contamination.  Next is the application of a preservative, a coat of wax that is sprayed over the fruits before moving along to another section to be wrapped and boxed.

Henry Warrington

“A lot of the work that we do are being done manually.  There’s not a lot of mechanization in the papaya industry because it’s a very delicate fruit.  You need people to work with it.  So yes on the one hand it’s a good opportunity for employment but whoever decides to plant papaya has to know that he’s gonna need a lot of people to work in his fields.”

Isani Cayetano

“From the nursery to the fruit processing plant there is a lot to be done in this agro business.  Here at Belize Fruit Packing Limited there is an average of one thousand, eighty boxes to be delivered to the Port of Belize Limited for export to the United States.”

Although considerably lesser in comparison to its competitors the estimated yield shipped to the global market on a weekly basis is a hundred thousand tons of Caribbean Red Papayas.  Not bad for a company that has had to endure a recent natural disaster and a global economic downturn. Reporting for News Five, Isani Cayetano.