B.S.I. Announces Record Second Payment for Sugarcane Farmers  

The Belize Sugar Industries Limited has announced a record second payment issued to sugarcane farmers for the 2024, 2025 crop. According to B.S.I., farmers received seventy-five dollars and twenty cents, five dollars more than the second payment in 2023. Shawn Chavarria, the Director of Finance at the mill spoke with reporters today. He explained that the increase in price is due to strategic industry investments, new market exploration and improved global prices. Just over one million tons of sugarcane was delivered to this mill this season. But, on the other hand, close to a hundred thousand tons of sugarcane remains standing in the fields. Chavarria says this outcome is because of a late start to the season and bad weather at the end of the crop.

Shawn Chavarria, Director of Finance, B.S.I./A.S.R.

“I think all of this demonstrates the benefits of those investments we have made to improve the value of the sugar that we are producing and also to lower the logistics cost is also being complimented by an increase over the last year in global sugar prices. So, all these factors have contributed to a new record payment which we hope will translate to farmers utilizing these funds to do some of the best practices we have been advocating for, which is replanting fields which are some of the lowest yields in the world, taking advantage of new programs that are coming on stream, such as Agropro which the company launched late last year, the Climate Fund Grant being implemented through the 5Cs to implement new varieties. We hope that with this additional disposable income farmers will have some resources to put it to good use and help improve the long-term viability of the industry.”

 

Reporter

“I think the minister of agriculture has said there is some one hundred thousand tons of sugar cane still standing. Could you tell us why that is?”

 

Shawn Chavarria

“We believe there is a currently an estimate being done by the Sugarcane Production Committee to go out there and validate how much cane was left standing in the field. We believe it could be between sixty to that hundred thousand tons of cane. That is the exercise the committee is currently conducting. The reason why we have standing cane is due to a combination of factors. The media might recall that at the start of this crop we had this impasse with the BSCFA where there was road blockage and they held up delivery for twelve to fourteen days. Prior to that the company had wanted to start the crop from the sixteenth of December but the date of the crop was not gazzeted by the SICB that date was gazzetted until the twenty-eight of December.”