SIRDI’s greatest challenge is to adapt new, innovative best practices

Marcos Osorio

The challenges to the industry have been many, natural and man-made. But Osorio says that in just five years SIRDI has made giant strides in the industry. Perhaps the greatest challenge has been persuading farmers to adapt new, innovative best practices. That remains an obstacle, but Osorio says that even that is much less of a problem than it was just a few years ago.

Marcos Osorio, Director, SIRDI

“We are overcoming that major challenge which has been good practices in producing sugar cane and that is why in our five years, we have done so much training and we are seeing the results today. So that challenge being overcome, we have other challenges; we had other challenges like financing; today there is financing. Today, new technology is being introduced and there is a high demand by farmers now in acceptance to the new technologies. The difficulties or challenges that we don’t have enough equipment to deliver the services to farmers, who are ready to engage in trying the new technologies. So that is a challenge we look forward to in the next two to three years that we will be able to satisfy all those demands in terms of equipment, in terms of technical support; in terms of the new technologies reaching the cane farmers. I think we have made five steps ahead in five years and I think this is a major achievement for the sugar industry. The celebration today is a milestone achieved; a dream come true for the cane farmers and I think we are hopeful that SIRDI will be in a better position now to deliver the technical support to our cane farmers.”

The opening today was attended by IICA’s Representative for Belize Jean Lowry, as well as EU Ambassador Paola Amadei.