Belize consumes an estimated ninety thousand pounds of onion per week. But right now it might be a little more because today when we checked at the Queen Square market, onions were selling for one dollar a pound and only 20 dollars for a fifty pound bag. For those who are not regular shoppers, that's dirt cheap!
And the reason for that is because there are too many onions on the market! As a consequence, local producers are hurting; they are selling below their cost of production just to get the onions off their hands before they spoil.
Many of those farmers are blaming the Belize Marketing and Development Corporation, widely known as the marketing board.
You see, the marketing board imported sixty five thousand pounds of onions from Holland just as the local onions from Corozal and Orange walk were coming in for harvest.
The Holland onions are cheaper, smaller and last longer. And now the local producers say that the presence of this imported product on the market has made it impossible for them to sell at a fair price.
So the marketing board is to blame. Or is it? The Manager Roque Mai today told us that in fact they do have the Holland onion, but they are in storage, spoiling as we speak - so that the local product can get some protection. Yet, the local producers' onions are also spoiling! So who's to blame? We tried to figure it out:
Roque Mai, Managing Director of BMDC
"The onions that came in on the first week of February, that would have finished about the week after or the 15th of February - exact time for the local onion to come in hand - it's just a switch. You turn on one switch imported, and then you turn another switch for the local; That's the calendar. But what happened is that the farmers planted early, and they started to harvest in Mid-January when the first production came in. So by the end of January, there was already an excess of onion, and we already had the onion on it's way sailing. So we couldn't return them backl; the shipment is already on the sea. We had no options and the onions arrived. We had a meeting with the onion association, and we purchased 129 bags of 50 pounds at 45 dollars. In the next day, the onion, still in the warehouse in Orange Walk, hadn't arrived in Belize City for distribution, when the price was set at $30."
Jules Vasquez
"Where? Who is selling it for $30?"
Roque Mai
"The farmers."
Jules Vasquez
"The same people who-"
Roque Mai
"Well it's a lot of them. It's being said that we are selling at $15 and $10 a bag. Just yesterday - today April 19- we sold 7 sacks of onions at $20. This is the receipt to prove it; We are not selling at 15. If the farmers are selling at $20, we are selling at $20; if they're selling tomorrow at $15, we'll go at $15."
Jules Vasquez
"However, shouldn't you do the other thing. Shouldn't You say, 'You know what, we have to help the local man. We'll stop selling the Holand onions until the local supply is exhausted.' Shouldn't you, in the interest of the small man, do that?"
Roque Mai
"Jules, like I've said, the last we have sold Holland onions is yesterday; for about two week we haven't sold them."
Jules Vasquez
"So but, your onions are spoilt; the local producers' onions are spoil. Are we in a glut situation?"
Roque Mai
"Alright, let me explain to you now, what happens is that everybody plants onion. Last month the records mentioned about a million pounds of onion in harvest. Where in the world, Belizeans can consume, at 90,000 a week times 4?"
Jules Vasquez
"That's a third of a million, 360,000."
Roque Mai
"How much months will it take us to consume a million pounds of onion?"
Jules Vasquez
"And is that how much we have?"
Roque Mai
"We have more harvesting right now. Everyday they're harvesting."
Jules Vasquez
"So you're saying that the market is over-supplied right now."
Roque Mai
"Over-supplied and our farmers planted too much. If I decided today, through technical advice - If i said today we write off the onions. Would you come to me again criticizm next week, saying, 'Mr. Mai, farmers are complaining that they can't sell their onions. Who do they go to?' And this will happen, believe you me. We write off these onions, Jules, stop selling and destroy our onions. Tomorrow they would have problems selling onions; it's too much onions planted in this country, too much onions."
The marketing board has 998 bags of the Holland Onions stored in Orange Walk and 857 bags stored in Santa Elena - both sets will probably end up spoiling and have to be discarded.
As for the local producers, their harvest is set to produce a reported two million pounds - and a large portion of that may also end up spoiling.
For what it's worth, when we checked at the City market today, only local onions were available.
Email
Print