Belizeans moving into legal trade in xate

Xate: it’s a nondescript jungle plant that Belizeans would likely never know about were it not for the fact that Guatemalans routinely and illegally cross our borders to steal it. But this long lasting source of greenery, used in floral arrangements around the world, is now being harvested by Belizeans. News Five Kendra Griffith reports from the Cayo District.

Kendra Griffith, Reporting
Employees were going full throttle at this warehouse in Santa Elena this morning as workers were preparing to send off a refrigerated container to Miami. Its contents: the jungle plant known as xate.

Earl Codd, Manager, Chico/Mex Belize
“The licence was approved in October last year. We started collecting leaves in November, December. We did a trial phase and training of our workers here in the packing shed about a month and a half period training and we did not export the first shipment until the end of December.”

Today’s container of three hundred boxes will be distributed to clients around the world.

Earl Codd
“In the U.S., Canada and Holland, it is used for floral arrangements. Especially Holland, they have quite a large market for floral arrangements, so basically there is a demand for it.”

Kendra Griffith
“What makes it so special? What it is about the xate that makes it so special? Why it is so wanted for floral arrangements?”

Earl Codd
“Basically the xate leaves can last up to two, three months. Personally, I’ve tried it, I used it at home and it took like two to three months before it started drying up.”

Chico/Mex Belize currently has about fifty employees: eight in the warehouse sorting and packing, two collectors responsible for picking up the leaves, and forty cutters.

Earl Codd
“We have cutters out in the jungle that harvest and prepare them in bundles of approximately eighty to ninety leaves per bundle and it’s then brought into our storage facility where we do the selection process.“

Esther Geban, Xate Selector
“When the leaves come in, they give us by pile and then we select. They have four sizes, small, media, large, and extra large. We select them and then the boys put them in sixteen, tie them. We pick out the dirty ones, clean them, and then do the same thing again.”

The business is a family affair, with Codd’s wife and two sons all playing a role. Twenty year old Derek is one of the cutters.

Derek Codd, Xate Licence Holder
“Actually, it’s a very tiring job. The roads, which I know is very rough. We normally have to get up sometimes around six in the morning, five-thirty, five in the morning to hit the road. It’s a long dreg, but we put all our efforts into it.”

Codd’s licence is for two years of harvesting in the Chiquibul Forest Reserve.

Percival Cho, Forest Officer
“It is a hot commodity in Belize right now because it is a new product. It is in high demand, especially in European markets and we have a lot of it.”

According to Forest Officer Percival Cho, the Forestry Department started giving out licences about three years ago.

Percival Cho
“That decision was made in early 2004. We issued the first xate licence in 2004 and since then we have issued two more.”

“Xate is available, well the five or six species are available almost countrywide. Fishtail is generally concentrated in the centre of country, up in the Chiquibul regions and in the south in Columbia area.”

But even though Belizeans can now collect the leaves legally, the illegal harvesting by Guatemalans has not dried up.

Percival Cho
“It is a very big problem. Our Belizean xateros are in fact competing with them in some cases. We still have the issue of illegal xate harvesting through the Guatemalan border. That, I don’t think we can get rid of in the near future, because it is something we have been fighting for two or three years now. It’s ongoing, but little by little we see the occurrences of illegal xate harvesting decreasing, because we are legalising most of the operations via our Belizean licences.“

Kendra Griffith
“You ever encounter any Guatemalans?”

Derek Codd
“No, not really, but I have reached to some to points that I have found numerous camps, which they still are horses that are out there in the wild, which they use to take their cargo out to Guatemala.”

“It will affect us yes, if we don’t find a way to control it. That’s why we are working closely with the police and the B.D.F. to help us in controlling the flow of illegal xateros in the Chiquibul area.”

One way that Chico/Mex is trying to control it, is by employing Guatemalan xateros.

Derek Codd
“Some of them which I have right now are Belizean xateros, some of them are from Maya Mopan. At the moment right now we are getting Guatemalan xateros because it is hard to find Belizean xateros to work in such an environment. Actually we are now processing the papers to bring in Guatemalan xateros to help work with us legally.”

At the same time, the business impresses upon its workers the need for proper harvesting techniques to safeguard the plants future. According to the company, conservation good makes business sense.

Derek Codd
“We try to inform our workers not to cut the smaller ones because the smaller ones, in due time they become big and then you can cut them. Because in the market, they don’t buy the small ones, they normally go for the larger leaves. So we try to talk to our cutters and try to explain to them that we don’t want the small ones them because they are no good. They are not profitable.”

“It’s a very large area, so we divide it into sections. We would normally divide it into four sections. We have one group working in that area. It’s like a cycle that for three months we work in one specific area, from there we move on to another area, which we would cut. So by the time you work for three months, you can come back to the same are and it is ready to harvest again.”

The Codd’s are also looking to take their sustainable practices a step further.

Earl Codd
“One of our plans for this year is to look at growing, setting up xate plantations. Hopefully by the end of this year, we could start putting in a nursery and looking at the sustainability of it also. And we want to encourage farmers, small tracts of land to get them involved in this industry also.”

“They do not need to be chopping down their land, just plant it out the same as what can be done with the cacao, so it’s something that can be done profitably.”

Percival Cho
“They are doing it in Guatemala and we have observed their plantations system and it seems to be working. It’s something that we encourage, whenever you harvest anything form the wild we encourage you to plant back. Plantations help to reduce the pressures on wild populations of xate, so it’s something we will definitely encourage.”

With a quarter million dollars invested in setting up his export business, Earl Codd, a former forestry officer, is pleased with his new business venture and looks forward to profits in the future.

Earl Codd
“At this point in time, due to the investment that we have done, we haven’t started seeing our returns as yet, we are in the first stage. Basically, since we are starting and due to the weather conditions, it took us about two weeks to get a shipment out. We are expecting that with the improvement of the weather, we could have on a weekly basis, a container.”

Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.

Codd says that he hopes that Belizean florists will also start buying xate on the local market.