Explosive debate about the situation of limes in Belize
But People's United Party spokesman for agriculture, Jose Abelardo Mai, called this ‘a slap in the face’ to the already struggling citrus industry, ignoring alternatives such as using the fallow lands previously given over to papaya in Corozal to grow the fruit and prop up that district’s economy.
Edition.channel5belize.com quoted Mai as saying: “For the Belize Marketing and Development Corporation to have requested such a task is completely disappointing to the agriculture sector and to the citrus industry. We live in the tropics. It’s true that there is a scarcity of limes, but it is a global scarcity. We have a citrus industry; this is the opportunity that the Ministry of Agriculture could have taken to provide the farmers with assistance. It takes about 500,000 dollars to establish enough acres of lime to supply the entire country.”
