The Belize government says it is urgently working to avoid a shut down between cane farmers and producers of the commodity even as the Sugar Industry Control Board (SICB) acknowledged that over 100,000 tons of cane were left to rot last year because there just weren’t enough workers to harvest the crop.
The cane farmers and the authorities have not yet signed an agreement for the upcoming sugar season and are scheduled to meet on December 16.
Belize’s 2025-26 sugar crop is expected to start with significant challenges, including a potential production dip due to climate issues, Fusarium wilt disease, and ongoing negotiations between Belize Sugar Industries (BSI) and Cane Farmers Association (BSCFA) with potential delays as of late 2025 if agreements aren’t reached.
Production of sugarcane in the 2025/26 season is estimated at 668.8 million tons, a drop of 1.2 per cent.
Prime Minister John Briceño, who has now taken direct control of the government’s role in managing the sugar industry, he believes his own temperament and neutrality are what the sector needs to steer both sides away from an impasse.
He recalled having told former agriculture minister José Abelardo Mai that he is not the minister for the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association (BSCFA) but the minister for the entire industry.
‘So you have to represent not only the farmers, but even the millers and the government. So you have to be able to manage all of this,’ Briceño said, he has the Minister of State, Osborn Martinez involved in the day-to-day interface with the cane farmers.
Prime Minister Briceño said that last week that he attended a meeting with the BSCFA, the Sugar Industry Research and Development Institute (SIRDI), the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Sugar and the millers.
‘A long meeting went on for several hours to discuss all of the issues addressing the challenges that we’re facing,’ Prime Minister Briceno said, adding ‘I am the one that actually really involved in the activities of the sugar industry’.
Meanwhile, SICB chairman, Marcos Osorio, has spoken about the labour shortages facing the industry in recent years.
‘We need government to assist us, but government cannot assist unless we are organised. And we maybe as an industry that we can come and say, for the upcoming harvest season, the industry needs a 100 cane cutters and we have identified 18 in Guatemala and 20 in Honduras.
‘And now that we have everything in place, then .we can come to government and say, how can you facilitate the process? And I think an important element to mention is that the cost to bring, to import labour from experiences of farmers that did import some labour last for the past crop, it was costing them almost BDZ4600 (one Belize dollar =US$0.49 cents) per cane cutter, and that’s only the cost of the stamp at the border.’
Osorio said that by the time the permit is approved, there is an additional BDZ$300.
‘Every stamp is two hundred dollars. In the past, it was fifty dollars per stamp per month. Now it is two hundred dollars per stamp per month. The permit used to cost, the worker permit used to cost two hundred dollars. Now it is costing three hundred.’
He said one the of difficulties in getting Belizeans to do the job is the payment.
‘Two it is very dirty work in terms of being out in the sun hot all day getting all the ashes from the, because it’s burnt cane that we harvest. And then the pay is not that – do not serve much as an incentive,’ he said.