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Yesterday we asked the Minister of Agriculture about the prospects for shrimp farming to return to the strong earnings it was making about 5 year ago:...

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Agriculture
"Our aquaculture is going through difficult times. If you take a visit down there and you will see that they are doing various serious moves with respect to the technology. Alvin has his own technology which is smaller ponds, bottom drain, you have things like some other farms of using rice brand in a certain process, some other forms like Mike Dunker has some tubes at the bottom where it is recirculating. All sorts of things are done to try to get on top of this. The bottom line is everybody sees some progress so far. It's not as magnificent as they would want, we have held joined meetings and I called a joined meeting with Central Bank, Social Security, the DFC, Atlantic Bank, Heritage Bank, all the players in the industry, BAHA, everybody, a whole day conference almost to discuss this matter on where we are going so I am surely optimistic that we will come back, gradually but certainly we will recover. I don't think shrimp at all is dead."

We also asked Hulse about the Citrus industry, which, like shrimp, has been experiencing diminished returns due to disease. Citrus has been in steady decline for more than a decade. To make a comeback - this century old industry needs new root stocks. Hulse told us what the plans are:..

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Agriculture
"This year we are looking at 2.9 to maybe 3 million boxes which is as you know a tremendous reduction. The prices are still good. I am not one of those persons at all that says the industry is dead. The same way I said sugar is not dead, nothing is dead. Why? Because forever people will be drinking juices. Forever people will have orange juice. Brazil is struggling, Miami is struggling, Belize is struggling, but we have the wherewithal to ride over this. First of all, the social security board have made funds available to citrus farmers so that they can replant that has already been approved and that is on its way. There are also looking at moving into pineapples as well because they want to reform that from just a citrus thing to a juice thing, so to speak. That's the first issue. The second issue though, at the board level AMBEV who is a major stake holder has appointed a new director to replace Henry Canton, I think his name is Jose Arias or something like that. Anyways, AMBEV is now looking at how they can get a little bit more involved, they have been talking to a company called PRODALIN which is a big company in Europe (Israeli) and also to be able to expand the capacity of the processing plant into other areas, tangerine, mangerine, pineapples etc."