An M.O.U. to Improve the Link between Buyers & Agro-Producers
A lot of effort has been put into developing resilient farms and ensuring that local produce is at top quality for consumers and the local markets. But our local farmers have been facing challenges with market access, so the Ministry of Economic Development, through its Resilient Rural Belize Program, today signed a memorandum of understanding with the Belize Marketing and Development Corporation. The primary objective of the M.O.U. is to improve B.M.D.C.’s Agricultural Market Price Information System that would link the agro-producers to potential buyers. The value is forty thousand dollars. Signing on behalf of the ministry and B.M.D.C. were C.E.O.s Doctor Osmond Martinez and Servulo Baeza.
Servulo Baeza
Servulo Baeza, C.E.O., Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security & Enterprise
“B.M.D.C. is the arm of the ministry that is in charge of marketing, making sure that the produce from our local producers get to the consumers. We have, I would say, if there is a weak link in our value chain that is where it is. And so we certainly appreciate all the assistance that we are getting from RRB to be able to strengthen our marketing component. It will help in terms of our website that we have certainly to disseminate the information that is available there – both to the consumers and to the producers. Training for our farmers and training in terms of the use of the website. Other components include a SWOT analysis to look at BMDC – to look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the cooperation and see how we can improve on them. Our farmers are very good producers, they are able to produce good quality products, but it is of no use if we can’t get it to the people who consume them. So our local market, our tourism market and hopefully in the future with the standardisation and quality, we can also be looking at exporting.”
Osmond Martinez
Dr. Osmond Martinez, C.E.O., Ministry of Economic Development
“Our Belizean agro-producers, especially the MSMEs, small agro-producers, they know how to produce, they have proven themselves. The problem is that they have experienced lack of support from every sector, including government. And this is a good opportunity to show that PlanBelize is committed to help rural development as well. And when you look at the marketing component that we have signed today, it will definitely help the rural producers to be able to access a fair share of monies in terms of trading their products, because a lot of times they have been abused practically, where they have worked really hard, but they don’t know how to market their product and someone else has to do it for them. So in addition that they would learn how to do marketing, it will assist them in terms of pro-poor development.”
R.R.B. Program Manager Geraldo Flowers and B.M.D.C. Director Valentin Carrillo witnessed the signing. The R.R.B. Program aims to introduce climate-resilient agricultural practices that allow smallholder farmers to operate using sustainable production processes, even under the stress of extreme climatic events.
