(CARICOM Today) The private sector as the centre of agriculture and food production was the recurring theme as the 12th Regional Agricultural Planners’ Forum began Monday at the Best Western Plus Belize Biltmore Plaza in Belize City.
Speakers at the opening ceremony of the two-day Forum zeroed in on issues such as improving the competitiveness of regional agriculture, attracting good investments in the sector, digitalising agriculture, focusing on agriculture as a business, and moving at the pace of business and not at the speed of bureaucracy.
Reducing the Region’s more than US$4B food import bill and the necessity for quality data for prudent decision-making were among the matters that were frustrating stakeholders.
Agriculture Minister of Belize, the Hon Godwin Hulse, said that the Forum was extremely important as it aimed to bring stakeholders together to discuss cooperation on matters of importance to agriculture in the Region.
The Region, he said, appeared to be struggling to get agriculture to a “place where we could be justifiably proud”.
Stressing the need for the agriculture sector to be business-oriented, Minister Hulse said that the days of subsistence farming and self-sufficiency were long gone.
“Young people especially are morphing away from agriculture because it doesn’t offer them any serious financial rewards so we would be relegated to more massive importation of the basic commodities. If we focus on…
