JOBS, WORK AND EDUCATION IN BELIZE

Young children and school children are the same all the world over, given the opportunity for education.
Belizean school children, descendants of United Nations Refugee program from the Salvadoranean Civil War.
Typical remote rural village school in Belize


JOBS, WORK AND EDUCATION IN BELIZE
By Ray Auxillou

The latest statistics show that 70% of the new population in Belize have no more than Standard 4 education. Which is around Grade 6 in the USA primary schools. In the USA, statistics show that 72% of the new populations do not have college.
What puzzles everybody in the USA and the EU countries is; what are going to be the NEW manufacturing jobs? It was not unusual for automobile factory workers in the USA to get $60 usa per hour. Working on a factory assembly line, is a numbing, mind deadening experience. While you do repetitive tasks, that are often nowadays replaced by robotics. Manufacturing jobs in the USA have dropped from 70% to 9% of the population, in employment circles. Everbody puzzles over the future? Those workers being displaced from factories today are unemployable. They had unions and pensions and gargantuan salaries, sometimes more than public service administrative personal with Ph’ds. The United Kingdom has also lost it’s manufacturing jobs. Most of those old factories are now in India, or China. I saw this happen in Canada as a youth, when railway workers in steam engines were made obsolete by diesel locomotives and laid off by the tens of thousands. Most of them never found another job. They died out on the dole. In the UK such obsolete workers, unfit for any kind of employment, due to their limited repetitive factory and union tendencies, that do not fit newer efficiency production and wage schedules, must pass out the remainder of their lives in tiny row houses among other millions of people, living off an unemployment cheque. Which is breaking the British Banks and government. The British Isles is the most congested and population dense country in all the countries of the European Union. It is of no use to migrate to England for sure, they are now a second world country, heading for third world status. We are observing the lingering death throes of the British Commonwealth and the British Empire.
How about Belize? What is our future? In the short term, for present population levels, land availability and population growth can be absorbed by agriculture. This cannot last and must be considered a short term solution for workers. The next step for any new government of Belize is the solicitation of manufacturing jobs, but what will they be? Cloning plants, confectionary exports, liquor exports, financial services, tourism offerings for adventure and excitement. These we know, but what does the future need? With a population in Belize that only has a base level of Standard 4 education, or Grade 6 in the USA, or Canada, we need to give some thought to the future. The same puzzle faces the European Union countries, the USA and other manufacturing countries.
For the small size of our country of Belize, the small size of our population and within the limits of population growth ( 10% a year ), we need to plot the next 30 years. After that, the situation and the story will change for the future once again, giving a new generation new challenges to solve recycling problems in a world driven by technology changes. ( The Mayan calendar of forecasting KATUN changes ) The world is in change because we are putting new invented technologies to use in manufacturing. These make old technologies obsolete.
What I have learned in Belize is that there are two main kinds of education that prepares young adults for life in their future life cycle of 70 years. We produce civil service types, clerks and administrators, we produce business people who are entrepreneurs, we produce farmers which is a growing opportunity field for probably another 20 years in Belize. Of the choices facing our 70% of the population who only have Standard 4 primary school, it is obvious the necessity of future governments is to resolve methods of raising our education levels through High School. Politicians must find ways to improve and raise school leaving statistics. What I learned in my life was that the science, physics, chemistry and mathematics courses, of High School, taught problem solving. This is essential to making your way in the world. We should shoot for at least the first two years of High School, as a minimum goal, to replace our current level of Standard 4 primary school leaving statistic. The middle goal would be a High School graduation. Not necessary but useful and a maximum goal should be two years of an Associate Degree level for the next largest number of our population. With the advent of the internet, any high school dropout can teach themself almost anything, in a trade and general sense, if the motivation is there. Anything over that upper education, usually destines one for employment in the civil service, or some sort of company administrator. For this, if you are going to go past an Associate Degree level, you obviously have decided on your career choice and nowadays, Bachelor Degrees and Masters Degrees are lower level worker requirements in administrative positions and the goal for any child going past Associate Degree should be the Ph’d. Or having several Ph’ds. If you want to be at the top of the administrative SALARIED employee heap.
Essentially new generations need to learn to problem solve. Learn to type and know how to find information on the internet. The biggest opportunities are in business, the export business. For business, two years of High School is probably the minimum for a sharp kid. An Associate Degree would allow some specialization and a lot of extra formative teen age years, learning to problem solve. Business is about problem solving, not about education per se. An education cannot make you a successful business person. Education can rob you of the opportunity if you have the drive and necessity to start a business though. An MBA is an oxymoron pretty much. A salaried type education mostly. Teenage years are mostly growing up and maturing years anyway, so keeping them in the education system is not going to hurt them.
There comes a split, a choice to be made somewhere in the late teens. Are you going to become a business entrepreneur, or a salaried employee for somebody else? If the former choice, then you have enough education from half way through High School, to the end of a two year college Associate Degree. A business entrepreneur learns to problem solve and the thing to learn, is to use other stupid people who have Bachelors and Masters and Ph’ds, to do your work for you. Pay them for giving you the information and specialty task you need to problem solve, as a businessperson. A business person is a generalist, a person who can find information and act upon it and put things together and make them work, to make a product that makes money. In engineering fields, we call a generalist business person, an APPLIED SCIENTIST. Somebody who is not educated in specialties, but knows a bit about everything, or can find out from those that know specialties, or do the research on the internet to figure out whatever it is they wish to do. The secret is problem solving and learning to take disparate parts of information and create something new, that can be sold abroad by exporting. The big money is in having a business. Also the big job security is in having a business, or in the case of Belize, it has always been so, since British Honduras colonial times, to have SEVEN businesses, to feed your family through the seasonal fluctuations in a year, found when you attempt to only have one business. The boom and bust cycle of any business, or feast and famine cycle found in businesses. Somewhere in early high school education in Belize, it is needed to teach new generations of Belizean youth, the lesson of using other peoples money, as in selling off SHARES to get the capital you require. How to form companies using other peoples risk capital. Keeping company control through different strategms. Most Belize colonial families still concentrate on family totally owned business, which is severely limiting of opportunities. There are successful exceptions, Barry Bowan and Lord Ashcroft are some examples.
The other choice children have to make, is how far in formal school education should you go? The choice is simple. If you are going to be a salaried person, working for an employer, then a Ph’d is the top education you require. Somewhere in here financial straits, and other family situations will cut you off before you get to the top of the salaried employee education heap. So that will put you lower down on the scale of salary to expect and the position you can hold, on the ladder of salaried employment. In a changing technological world, this will never give you job security though. The business orientated person on the other hand, should not exceed an Associate Degree, as further specialization ruins your generalist education needed, to recognize and problem solve the starting of new businesses and taking opportunities. There are exceptions of course, these thoughts are generalizations, but true for the majority of people in any field. Once you build one successful business, repeating this effect becomes easier as you build more businesses. What education prior to an Associate Degree gives you in the formal sense, is the art of problem solving and the art of finding information and figuring things out. Mostly this is found in High School level science and mathematics courses.
So what are the businesses for the future in Belize? Food processing in the small niche brand name is one. War is always good business and the invention, or the use of applied science to take pieces of easily available materials out of a catalogue and build a better, more effective weapon of killing people, has always been good business. In the two World War generations, this was heavy artillery, tanks and stuff of that sort. Restricting war technology to the industrialized nations. Today it is is exotic new weaponry requiring very little investment, just ideas and the will to experiment in a machine shop, or hire somebody good with computer software, or electronics. The Israelis invented the spy drone for instance, with only a small land area and a population of 2 million, by buying off the shelf products used to video tape football stadium games, by cameras used in sports blimps and make toys for radio controlled model airplanes. Some backyard garage tinkerer invented the .50 caliber marine sniper rifle and sold it to the CIA for example for manufacture. There are artisan type productions that will always have a market. Most nowadays are mass produced in factories in China though. Something unique would have a small market for a while, before the idea is stolen. About two years usually. If you can make a million of them and make $2 each, before your idea is stolen, you are still to the good as a business person. In business, you only have about 2 years before copy cat competitors ruin everything for you. Certainly some of the new technologies in nano-technology are going to take off, just waiting for some entrepreneur to put together scattered pieces of materials on the shelves and make something new. I just have been reaping in Belize some long red sweet chile peppers. I'm amazed at how easy they grow in dry season, when my lettuce and tomatoes are failing. You get a farmer to grow you a hundred acres of chile peppers and the entrepreneur business person would problem solve and figure out how to make cardboard boxes, ship them and market to the EU, or Canada Caribbean populations abroad. Payment by F.O.B letter of credit through a bank. Obviously here is another business just found out in the last three weeks, with potential in Belize. The CHINESE immigrants go into food stores, they figure locals have to eat. Good or bad times. The world populations are growing and they have to eat too. It just takes some problem solving of the entrepreneurial kind.
There are lots of opportunities for Belizeans. First we have to raise that Standard 4 primary school leaving statistic, showing 70% of our population are relatively uneducated. They can make it now, under current land rich, small population conditions, though the difficulties are already seen in Belize City particularly and some other towns of an uneducated class, of males and females. Since jobs per se are going to be always difficult in Belize to find, then we should concentrate on entrepreneurial type education, through the first two years of High School. Starting in Standard 5 and 6 of Primary school. We need to widen our early education curriculums, as 70% of our population in early education are not getting exposed to the world and taught what they need to survive. This offered solution does not fit all persons, but should cover the majority. From here it is up to the salaried politicians and the bureaucrats to find the solutions.

February Belize Agriculture News 2009

One of the green parrots who are carrying tales of news around Cayo District to my window.



AGRICULTURE NEWS AND GOSSIP IN CAYO WEST UNDER THE BREADFRUIT TREE!

Can’t vouch for any of the following, but the rumor mill, in the shape of a few tiny GREEN PARROTS stopped by my house and told me the following, while sitting on the branches outside the living room window.
SPANISH LOOKOUT had TWO BIG OIL SPILLS about ten days ago. None of the media have been alerted, or reported same in newspapers or on television, and the government is to be congratulated on keeping a lid on this environmental disaster. Must be what they call a D notice in the UK?
Genetically modified seeds are sporadically and selectively being banned in Belize, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it? You can buy genetically modified vegetable seeds of sorts, except like corn and beans. Papaya grown for export are supposed to be genetically modified varieties. We also import all of our genetically modified cereals like Corn Flakes from the USA, which are genetically modified produce sold in cardboard boxes, mostly by the USA and Mexico for human consumption.
The BIO SAFETY committee that makes these decisions does not have a single respectable big farmer on the committee for decision making, so it is said. Farmers over in Spanish Lookout say there is more danger from the massive insecticides they have to apply, than from genetically modified seeds, approved by UK research, or from the USA FDA.
You hear a lot about government agriculture assistance and protections, but one farmer reported that he just had to pay 90% duty on his PVC irrigation pipes for his crops.
Some farmers want a FREE TRADE DEAL with our neighboring Central American countries. The argument is that we can compete, because of the transportation costs, versus bulk production. They allege our GOVERNMENT is saying no! The CABINET of course is run by non-farmers from the port town mostly. Very intelligent people down in that port town on agriculture issues
There is a bureaucratic and political desire for us to export to CARICOM, but the only market that works is for small loads of beans. CARICOM seems to be a loser for economic trade policy. When the bureaucrats are asked to provide foreign export markets, they back off, even though the CABINET keep announcing in press releases, of all the various government departments, that are SUPPOSED to locate export markets, presumably collecting big time salaries to do so? There should be some sort of supervision and report card for bureaucrat market researchers in government departments. We need a scorecard to see how well they are performing. Any chance of getting a list of names and phone numbers? The bureaucrats tell producers they must find their own information, but we farmers have no internet and can’t do so. The government according to farmers is dysfunctional in the export marketing realm.
There was more gossip, but the last parrot had flown away, before I could write all this stuff down, so I tend to forget.

SHORTAGE OF TROPICAL EMPEROR LETTUCE SEEDS IN BELIZE

SHORTAGE OF LETTUCE SEEDS - TROPICAL EMPEROR

There is a three month shortage of Tropical Emperor leaf lettuce seeds in Belize. Agro Pro the agency seller of this top lettuce seed variety in Belize, here in the Twin Towns, has none and says that it is unlikely they will get any soon. A recent visit to Central Farm Research Station to try and get a small amount of 500 seeds met with failure. They also have none for themselves and say that before they can get the bureaucratic procedure purchase orders made out and processed, the Tropical Emperor seeds are sold out to somebody else.
TROPICAL EMPEROR leaf lettuce seeds have won out as the best variety found out, of about 30 trials of different types of lettuce in tropical Belize over the past three or four years. They come from Israel. The importer is somebody down in the coastal port town.
There is nothing else in lettuce varieties that even come close to commercial viability here in Western and Northern Belize. It is more or less a waste of time using lettuce seeds of other brands. They have been shown to be non-productive in a commercial sense.
Experiments with Lettuce Seeds have met with failure in trying to grow HEAD LETTUCE, believed possibly to be an altitude problem for our tropical lowland climate. The crops should have been planted in Late September, Early October going through the winter season. Failure to get TROPICAL EMPEROR seeds is hampering the commercial production of leaf lettuce for the import substitution for the local market.

BELIZE CABINET NOT IN FAVOR OF VENEZUELAN TRADE THROUGH ALBA

RENE MONTERO INFORMS ON ALBA TRADE PROSPECTS!

The Honourable Rene Montero, Belize Cabinet Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries gave me a phone call late Wednesday afternoon, about another personal matter and I took the opportunity to ask him about the ALBA TRADE proposals with Venezuela. He said, that the Cabinet and other officials had a number of talks with the Venezuela Ambassador, but that the Cabinet was not too enthused with the ALBA trade prospects. The major reasons Rene Montero gave, was the difficulty of transportation. He used the high cost of ocean freight between Belize and Caracas, Venezuela as an example. He did not mention the exorbitant costs of port loading fees in Belize, which has the private sector exporters outraged. Over the phone we did not get into the nitty gritty details about whether this would be a government to government thingy, or prices for goods, and methods of payments, or getting money for export entrepreneurs and food processors who would like to gear up to a solid Caribbean market flush with cash oil money. Venezuela being a socialist state, these type of countries and governments are very corrupt normally, ruled by a party elite, and it is difficult to deal from the private sector viewpoint with such corrupt governments, unless you were a similar type of state with an entrenched elite ruling party corrupt class. We would like to hear more nitty gritty details proposed by the Venezuelan Embassy, so the private sector entrepreneurs in Belize could judge for themselves. Rene did advise me there was an agriculture department show on the radio on Sundays. Never listen to the radio, as reception is not too good out our way in rural Western Belize, so disappointed in that. Told him we mostly get our government information from the port town weekly newspapers, which are mostly yellow journalism, dealing in scandals ( real and imagined ) in crime, politics and sports. We do catch the occasional television news flash in the evenings, which we find interesting.

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