Sugar Season Ends with Record Low Output

Today marks the close of the 2024/2025 sugar crop season.  The closing is marked with doom and gloom as the season has recorded the lowest output in history.  While there are several contributing factors to the situation, Prime Minister John Briceno, noted that there will be the need for interventions to mitigate these factors in the upcoming season.  The Prime Minister opened today’s House Meeting in Belmopan with the revelation that the factory in the north ran out of cane at the mill just before eight o’clock this morning.

John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “ I just received a short WhatsApp message from Marco Sosorio, who is the chairman of the Sugar Industry Control Board. And he said, “Good morning, Prime Minister. At 7:57 this morning, the mill ran out of cane, bringing the 2024-2025 crop season to an end. Thank God, industry completes one more crop to be one of the most, if not the most challenging one. Cane production down due to weather, pests, and now the fusarium disease. Milling rate for the season was low due to challenging field conditions and limited workforce for cane harvest and delivery. Low sugar output and a low cane price estimate. The sugar industry is at a very difficult time and requires all hands on deck, GOB, farmers and miller to join forces to work on a plan of action to take the industry forward. The resilience of farmers is put to test but together we will find and implement solutions to advance the industry and we will succeed.” For sure, the sugar industry is in probably its most serious crisis, actually an existential crisis and we must do everything that we can within our power to address this issue. For those not involved in the sugar industry, there’s a disease named fusarium a wilt disease that is currently ravaging sugarcane fields in the north. Yesterday I had a meeting with the leaders of the Cane Farmers Association and the SICB, the Ministry of Agriculture, Minister Mai was there along with Minister Martinez and Dr. Avila. We spoke some a bit on this. One of the things that kind of surprising to me and I guess to most Belizeans is apparently this fungus, it’s a fungus, has been around for about 30 years. But what has happened because of the  weather conditions, extreme water last year and then the drought, has allowed….been the perfect conditions for this to be able to multiply very quickly. Mexico has been decimated here in the south and they’re hoping for a recovery next year. So last November the Sugar Industry Research and Development Institute, SIRDI, The Belize Agriculture Health Authority BAHA , and the Ministry of Agriculture conducted a field assessment and determined that more than 60,000 acres of sugarcane were infested with fusarium wilt disease. The assessment concluded that 8,060 acres that were severely infested with most of the other 35,500 infested fields were mildly infected. The predictions were that overall this would mean a 30% or 215,000 tons lost in cane production. The assessment also indicated that there would be a significant reduction in yield per acre as well as fall in the quality of cane harvested, affecting efficiencies both at the field level as well as at the factory at BSI. The effect of it all is that today the sugar crop has come to an end and it will be one of the worst sugar crops we’ve had in a long time. By this morning, again, the estimate is around 880,000 tons of cane would have been delivered. What’s even worse is that the tons of cane to produce one ton of sugar has been even worse. The current tons per cane / tons of sugar stands at 11.12 tons of cane for one ton of sugar. When the cane is really good you’re getting probably about nine tons of cane for one ton of sugar. So we are using another two tons and a quarter more to be able to make one ton of sugar. So this is by far the worst we’ve had production in recent history in the industry since  2011. BSI will produce just over 78,000 tons of sugar. For context this year the factory will produce 97,800 tons less than what was produced last year. And 154,000 tons of sugar less when it was produced in 2019.”