In the blink of an eye things got worse in our country. Unfortunately, our governments didn’t do a great job with our resources in the first 20 years of this new century/millennium, and then, in 2020, along with the rest of the world, we got hit by a terrible pandemic. Our troubles don’t end there. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has helped drive up the cost of imports (finished goods and raw materials) and threatens to escalate into a third “World War”; and unrelenting Climate Change has caused an increase in droughts and floods across the country. On Wednesday, a Cat 1 hurricane battered Belize City and Belize Rural, causing losses in the millions of dollars.
These are bad times, but far from hopeless. The area of greatest urgency is the production of affordable, wholesome food. There isn’t anything good, not in the short term or the long, about human beings not satisfying their basic need for sufficient, wholesome food.
According to the Amandala, PM John Briceño, speaking at a press conference after Hurricane Lisa, noted that in comparison to developed countries, when disasters hit developing states like Belize, the impact on the nation’s economic development is monumentally more severe. And, speaking at the same press conference, Dr. Kenrick Williams, CEO of the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Disaster Risk Management, said: “If you compare the economic implications of Hurricane Lisa on Belize to a storm on Miami, they’re significantly different, because the US can position monies, investments in responding to those storms.”
Indeed, hurricanes don’t impact the US economy the way they impact ours. The free market system works differently for us too. In the US, it has produced a per capita income of US$36,000, while that same system has produced a per capita income of US$4,500 for Belizeans. There are factors outside of the economic system that impact earnings, but they don’t come close to explaining the tremendous income gap between the USA and Belize.
Belize’s first leader, George Price, extolled the mixed economy, and he promised that with independence, economic prosperity would come if we continued working that system, but within three years of independence, in 1981, his government (PUP) was ousted from office. A deep world recession between 1980 and 1983 and the people’s desire to see a new set of faces in government were key factors in Price and the PUP’s falling out of favor.
The Manuel Esquivel UDP government that came to power in 1984 was gung ho on the free market system. That government expanded and improved the lot of the middle class by privatizing a chunk of BTL, selling off the banana industry to large growers, putting emphasis on tourism, and selling economic citizenship, and through financial aid from the Reagan government in the USA.
The masses, impoverished Belizeans, didn’t buy into the UDP’s capitalist system. Far from sufficient “crumbs” trickled down, and in 1989 they returned the PUP to power. But the PUP government of 1989 -1993 was only nominally under Price. In his place was a trio that featured elected representatives, Said Musa and Glenn Godfrey, and the unelected Ralph Fonseca, the de facto leader.
Ralph Fonseca’s late father, Rafael Fonseca, had prudently guided the Ministry of Finance during the Price glory years, but the son wasn’t a “chip off the old block.” Ralph Fonseca was a big spender, and he continued the Esquivel free market system and borrowed at exorbitant interest rates to expand office infrastructure.
The UDP of 1984-89 introduced Belize to the type of capitalism practiced in the US, and the PUP of 1989-93 put the final nail in the mixed economy. Ever since, the free market system has held sway—and the results have been “notn nice” for the masses. After 40 years of independence, we have a wealthy class—and the masses have been left far behind. Our poverty rate reached a peak during the early days of the pandemic when it was determined to be above 60%.
Capitalism takes the trophy for wealth creation, and fails with its distribution. Despite all that has transpired in Belize, there are Belizeans who are living their best lives. But forty-one years after independence, many Belizeans can’t afford adequate housing and struggle to put wholesome food on their tables. Of the two, the easier to solve is wholesome food, because most of the tools to remedy that are right at home. All we need to do is tweak the system, and start preserving/canning our excess produce.
We’ve never had a drought or flood all over our country, and never had a hurricane decimate all of our country. But we have had all of our farmers in production at the same time, which has led to gluts. Then, in our present system, which is based entirely on market forces, everyone in the sector loses. Then, many farmers stop planting, a shortage follows, and prices go up. It just can’t work that way in our little country.
The government must be involved at all levels of agricultural production for local consumption, with the primary mission being to ensure wholesome, affordable food for all. The experts insist that our country has too many public employees. The GOB had its heart in the right place when it didn’t cut staff during the pandemic, and it doesn’t have to do that now. GOB needs to redeploy public employees, to work on logistics so we can decrease the cost of doing business in Belize, and to help supervise farmers and farms, to make them more efficient. GOB must put prime lands under its control, including idle portions at the agricultural stations across the country, into production, to supply food for school feeding programs and families that have the most need.
The goal of “wholesome, affordable food for all” must be attained without sacrificing the profits of our small farmers and vendors. Efforts to achieve that will be helped greatly if we reduce wastage. Processing and canning food aren’t the ideal—wholesome food is fresh, direct from the farm and the sea to the table—however, to ensure sufficient quantity, we have to sacrifice quality. Experts say a cannery isn’t feasible because of our small population, but we can attain the adequate economies of scale if we find markets for our products. World Food Programme says Cuba imports 70 to 80% of its food, and the USDA says 60% of Venezuela’s food is imported. We can trade/sell canned food to Cuba, to pay for medical personnel, and to Venezuela, to pay for oil.
There might be a time when Belize can totally follow the free market path to produce food, but that time isn’t now. Being in the aftermath of a pandemic and a recent hurricane, facing uncertain times because of Climate Change, and carrying a heavy debt burden, we can’t continue on a path that is failing. The first basic need of human beings is sufficient, wholesome food. In the best of times, the present system hasn’t delivered for our people.