BELIZE- 14 sugar cane quality control stations established for this crop.

SUGAR CANE PRODUCTION COMMITTEE CHARGED WITH QUALITY CONTROL.

Belize Sugar Industry Research and Development Institute has been reactivated and comes under the arm of the Sugar Industry Control Board ( SICB ) and will provide technical support to farmers.

Another arm of the Sugar Industry (SCPC ) the Sugar Cane Production Committee has been charged with implementing and supervising the quality control program to which all parties: the government of Belize, SICB, BSI and the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association subscribe. It hasn´t worked for the past ten years. We can only hope it will work for this crop, the decisive crop, for success, or failure of the sugar industry in Belize under this structuring.

a)BSI Finance Director Belizario Carballo said that this crop will be the decisive future of the industry as it operates now. This year will make or break the industry. The sugar industry has been collapsing around the Caribbean. NEW PAYMENTS will be put into effect based on quality of a farmers cane.

b) 18 branches of the Sugar Cane Farmes Associations, nine from Corozal and nine from Orange Walk have formed 14 QUALITY TEST GROUPS. The process is two fold. They are to help maintaining quality, and to organize delivery time frames. Fresh cane is high in sucrose. The more trucks wait outside the factory for delivery, otherwise fermentation takes place causing the cane to lose sugar. Test groups will now assign fasrmers time slots, during which farmers from each of the branches can deliver their cane, eliminating congestion and waiting delays that allow fermentation to occur.´The problem of mud as extra weight is to be tackled also.

Last year the EU slashed imports of sugar cane 22%. Belize was not even able to qualify to sell sugar cane to the USA on quota.

The BSI Factory has their new Bagasse co-generation installation bugs ironed out and deliveries should proceed better for processing.

WE WAIT AND SEE! The Chinese stand ready to take over the industry should it fail, sometime in 2012. What form that would take is unknown. Mainland China is short of sugar.