The Amandala of February 5, 2025, reported that a January 20 Executive Order by US president, Donald Trump, froze funds earmarked for foreign aid, and among the organizations affected by the decision was “OIRSA (Organismo Internacional Regional de Sanidad Agropecuaria), the regional organization responsible for animal and plant health.” The report said that Minister of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise, Hon. Jose Mai expressed disappointment with the decision by the US, which he said would impact the American-owned “sterilization plant for NWS (New World Screwworm) flies in Panama.”
In that report, Mai is quoted as saying that “a note had been received that spending should be halted until around mid-February”; however, just a couple of days later we learned that the funding freeze hadn’t interrupted the production of sterile flies. On February 7, a 7News report said that Mai pointed out that sterile flies had been dispersed “in every single country of Central America” and Mexico, but Belize hadn’t “benefited from the dispersal of sterile flies.” Mai said the government had written to the responsible department, USDA APHIS (United States Department of Agriculture-Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service), and that our petition was supported by Mexico and OIRSA, “but they have not responded favorably”, and have said they “cannot [help us] at this time.”
Mai said that every resource at our disposal has been deployed in the battle to control the NWS. The magic bullet is the sterilized NWS flies, which had eradicated screw worms from our region for more than two decades. Inevitably, the NWS will become endemic here again if we rely solely on the resources we have locally. Our neighbors will not be happy if Belize becomes a breeding ground for NWS in the region. In situations like these, WHY doesn’t matter, only results do.
Our livestock industry would take a hit if sterile flies aren’t included in our control program. Our cattle herd has about quadrupled over the past two decades. The 2023-24 report of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security, and Enterprise said that presently “the national cattle herd stands at almost 200,000 head of cattle”, and that it is “estimated that more than 25,000 to 30,000 Belizeans are directly impacted because of cattle farming.”
We can hardly be accused of cynicism if we speculated that the explanation for USDA APHIS “denying” us this essential tool in the fight against the NWS, is that we are being disciplined for something; and if that is so, that something is related to our stance against the genocide Israel has committed in Gaza, partly in response to the deadly Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
Within a month of Israel’s ferocious onslaught, when it had already exacted revenge ten times over for what Hamas did, Belize called for a ceasefire, and then followed up by breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel when it persisted in the destruction of Gaza and its people. It is no secret that the US is Israel’s number one ally, and that at times the relationship appears to exist without conditions. Former US president, Joe Biden called for Israel to cease firing on Gaza, while supplying them with munitions; and new US president, Donald Trump met recently with Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, who seemed to grin when Trump declared that the US would take control of Gaza.
Dozens of countries have expressed support for a genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel at the ICJ (International Court of Justice), and on January 30 Belize announced that it had joined the case, alongside Mexico, Cuba, Spain and others. NBC News reported that “after Trump signed an executive order slapping financial sanctions and visa restrictions against ICC (International Criminal Court) staff and their family members, alleging the court has improperly targeted the United States and Israel”, 79 countries, including Germany, South Africa, and Mexico said the sanctions “threaten to erode the international rule of law.”
No country owes more to the United Nations than we do. It was on the order of the UN General Assembly that we came into existence as an independent nation. It isn’t easy for Belize, a Christian nation, to not cry out as we think Christ would, when we see powerful nations unleash their military might on their neighbors. The issues in the Middle East are complex. Belize believes in the collective wisdom of the UN to resolve them.
Santander and the Belize River
Belize is heavily dependent on our agro-productive sector for foreign exchange earnings and for jobs, so without question the industries in this sector need to be protected. However, it must be kept in mind that every good thing can go sour. Petroleum mining is among the most enriching, but if it is unmonitored it can pollute the environment, or cause countries to become dependent on foreign food.
In Belize, sugar is still king. The agriculture ministry’s 2023-24 report said that in 2023 our country produced 1.49 million tons of sugarcane, the factory in the north, BSI, receiving 977,672 tons, and the factory in the west, Santander, receiving 511,288 tons. The report said our total earnings from sugar exports that year was $157.9 million (around a third of our total earnings from domestic exports), and it forecasted the production in the west to grow to over 850,000 tons in 2024.
With two former top earners, citrus and farmed shrimp, facing difficult times because of diseases, Santander, after a little over a decade in existence, vies with the banana industry for the number two spot in the agro-industry. The sugarcane industry is not exempt from challenges in the field. Smut and froghopper are threats to the industry which farmers largely have under control, but a fungal disease that has infected sugarcane plantations in the north threatens to reduce yields significantly.
So much of our livelihood depends on the success of the sugar industry. Because of its importance, the industry must be coddled, but not to the point where it carries out its activities without oversight. There is a concern which has been expressed in the newspaper before, regarding a report about the company’s usage of water from our country’s most famous and valuable waterway, the Belize River, to irrigate its fields during the dry season.
A story on yahoo!news, “Report Reveals World’s Fourth Largest Lake Now a Deadly Desert”, by Tessa Koumoundouros, said the Aral Sea in Central Asia had decreased to less than one-eight of its original size, from 68,000 to 8,000 square kilometers. Koumoundouros said that “between the 1960s and 1990s, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, that flowed from the mountains to supply the lake, were redirected to irrigate 7 million hectares (1.7 million acres) of cotton field for the Soviet Union”, and that “lakes and other land-based water systems in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Australia, and the US, are all shrinking due to industrialized agricultural and climate pressures.”
While there has been no diversion of the Belize River, we still need to be vigilant. For the good of all, Belize must protect its fresh water resources; a step in the right direction is for us to store water in times of plenty. The dry season is our best period for heavy lifting – road building, the construction of bridges and houses, land preparation. Santander, and our environmentalists, might look into the construction of ponds this dry season, so that the company stores water during the season of floods, for the season when the river oftentimes runs low.