Dissident cane farmers seek Supreme Court relief
Harvesting of the new sugar crop is underway and while B.S.I. is looking forward to branching into the electricity business via its BELCOGEN project, the outlook is not so bright for cane farmers. Confronted with the loss of price subsidies from the European Union and higher costs of production, a dissident group of farmers, primarily from the Orange Walk District, has broken away from the legally mandated Cane Farmers Association. Today founding member Wilfredo Magana and Chairman Efrain Zetina visited our studios to explain why they’re looking for change.
Wilfredo Magana, Member, United Canefarmers Association
“We thought that it was time for us to get financially involved in terms of knowing why is it the association from year to year has no money.”
Efrain Zetina, Chairman, Unite Canefarmers Association
“It is the right time to change our farmers to another association. Recently there’s a lot of things coming on from the United European saying that as an industry we should reform and the way the industry is right now with this Belize Canefarmers Association they have no intention to reform. Now farmers that are looking forward for a better future, for a future for themselves and their children they came together to form a new association.”
Wilfredo Magana
“I can say what we are doing for the farmer now is we are importing fertilizer for quite a while, it’s a few months now, at a very cheap, affordable price for our farmers. We are also looking into the area of the problem we have with the sugar roads we have right now; how we can, with the other cooperatives, work along with the sugar runs because right now the industry is not moving because the roads are so bad. And so this is a part of some of the things we know we can accomplish by uniting ourselves together.”
In addition to helping its members, the new association is pursuing a constitutional case in the Supreme Court seeking to overthrow mandatory membership in the Cane Farmers Association and the one dollar per ton cess farmers must pay to support that body. Hubert Elrington is attorney for the new group.
Hubert Elrington, Attorney, United Canefarmers
“The question here is whether the cane farmers…the Sugar Cane Act that regulates the industry is constitutional; that’s a major question. And the particular aspects of that question is whether or not Parliament in Belize can compel a person to join or not to join an association, can compel a person to contribute, out of his own pocket, monies to the association and can say to a person if you want to be in a business or you want to be in a trade or in a profession you must belong to a particular organization. These are huge constitutional questions.”
Stewart Krohn
“In the narrow case based on Justice Arana’s decision in the citrus cess litigation one would think that that issue, at least as far as charging a cess, would have been settled. Are you banking on that decision to carry you through?”
Hubert Elrington
“Well, that is the law of the land and until it goes to the Court of Appeal – and it was not appealed – that remains the law of the land. And we are saying to the government now that the Supreme Court has made that decision why are you still allowing the system to continue? Why have you not changed the system? You have the judgement of the Supreme Court of Belize.”
Stewart Krohn
“Let’s jump ahead to the practical aspects. If this case is successful does it not then become every farmer for himself up in the sugar belt, how will it affect the industry?”
Hubert Elrington
“Because it is in the farmer’s industry to have strong, good associations like they have had in the fishing cooperatives and in the credit union movement. Our people in Belize have shown that when you give them the opportunity they will establish strong credit unions, they will establish strong fishing cooperatives and they will establish strong associations. They are good at managing their own association and their own affairs, that’s the strength of the people.”
The United Cane Farmers Association claims to represent farmers making thirty percent of the district’s cane deliveries to Tower Hill. The case in the court of Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh is scheduled for January twenty-eighth.
