This morning, stakeholders in the country's northern sugar industry were at the Escuela Secundaria Tecnica Mexico in the Corozal District. That's where Fairtrade International and Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association launched their joint stakeholder discussion on active youth inclusion in the production of sugar cane.
As viewers are aware, child labor within the sugar industry is actively discouraged. But, industry participants are starting to observe a trend where young people are becoming less inclined to actively participate in agriculture. So, to ensure that the next generation of cane farmers are ready to take over from their elders, Fairtrade and the BSCFA have come up with a youth-focused policy.
Our colleagues from CTV3 attended the launch, and here's what the keynote speakers had to say about the way it is contemplated to work:
Anita Sheth - Rep., Fairtrade International
"Fairtrade International began working with Belizean Sugarcane Farmers Association in 2015. We started with a pilot called Youth Inclusive Community Based Monitoring and Remediation for Child Labor. At the time, we wanted young people to be involved in collecting, identifying, and responding to issues of children's unacceptable labor and sugarcane production. Following that, and on recommendations of the youth monitors who we used in this system, they suggested that we commission a study to engage youth cane cutters regarding their livelihood, and the working conditions in cane cutting farms. Fairtrade International has been undertaking work with children and young people, through focus groups to get their input, and to hear their views. And we found that a very high percentage of them were not interested in agriculture as a sustainable livelihood."
Hon. Jose Mai - Minister of Agriculture, Food Security & Enterprise
"I asked myself the question, how do I get my twenty-two-year-old son back into the field or back into the sugar cane business? And if it would be it would have been a viable, profitable, beneficial industry, he would go to university to help his old man in the field."
Anita Sheth
"So we understood about five years ago that we needed to make some change. Fairtrade International and then design the policy to address the next generation. Our current global strategy has three pillars, involving young people. And the last pillar is for young people, to regard them as the launchpad for the future, the next generation of Fairtrade. So since BSCFA had engaged us in this pilot program, which they scaled up involving young people, not just as objects of data but as subjects, collecting the data, deciding on the data, analyzing the data, and making recommendations on the findings we decided to approach BSCFA, to ask them if they are open to systemic change, open to changing the way their organizations run, the way they make decisions to make it more inclusive. Because as far as the eye can see in Northern Belize, there's only sugar cane. And if there's no next generation it will impact the economy of Belize, the sugar cane producers, and so on and so forth. And BSCFA was very open to this. So, we piloted the project here and now, and we've scaled this up across the regions where we operate, with a number of producers interested in piloting a policy and creating youth advisory committees. To input into decision-making at the board level."
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