Harvest for Kids; 40 Acres of Success for Belize Camping Experience

It was a big week for the Belize Camping Experience. Aside from the recognition for having second best booth at the expo, its Harvest for Kids Project turned out to be a huge success. With the help of generous farmers, the organization harvested a total of forty acres of corn; twenty in Banana Bank on Saturday and twenty in Orange Walk on Thursday. The farmers provided the land and the machinery for the harvest and the corn will now be sold to support future summer camps in Belize City. Belize Camping Experience Director, Alexander Perez, says their efforts have also been recognized by Harvest for Kids International, during the coverage of a harvest in Canada on Saturday, which earned a Guinness world record by putting two hundred and forty-nine combines on one field.  According to the Perez, the support and recognition have provided a major boost for their small organization.

Alexander Perez, Director, Belize Camping Experience

Alexander Perez

“The Harvest for Kids, harvesting was fantastic. We were able to do both events almost in a span of one week. We harvested our first corn on Saturday in Banana Bank and we had absolute cooperation from the farmers. We got over twenty farmers involved; we had eleven machines on the roar. Like when you heard these machines, you thought there was something out of order happening, but these machines came from an hour away from Spanish Lookout, some came from further and they came and lined up the machines.  We harvested the corn in twenty-six minutes; the twenty acres were gone, twenty-six minutes. We had lots of planes flying in the air and we had many other farmers who brought their big semi trucks to take the corn because we had two semi truck loads. We got for each acre; we got fifty sacks of corn. So if you multiply that by twenty, we got one thousand sacks of corn. You can make a lot of tortillas with that. So that was our first harvest. When we finished that harvest, we moved right into Orange Walk. Yesterday, when we harvested our corn, something amazing happened; the people of Shipyard responded and we had four combines with steel wheel tires from Shipyard and we had one from Indian Church. The rest came from Blue Creek and others came from San Carlos and they responded to the call and I would love for people to have seen this.  We were able to raise all our expenses for the corn, the fertilizer and the chemicals so yesterday as we harvested our corn, we got a hundred percent profit for all that corn, all that hard work and the farmers are so excited and they are so amazed that we were able to do this together.”