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Yesterday, we took you BSI/ASR's Towerhill Factory in Orange Walk for the beginning of this year's cane crop season. 

The sugar cane farmers, are attempting to recover from major losses in investment due to last year's extended drought. For the thousands of cane farmers, their livelihoods have been under duress for a number of years. 

First, they have been challenged by low prices on the global market for sugar. All the other sugar-producing nations of the world have FLOODED the global market, driving prices down.  

The effect of this was demonstrated at the end of the 2017/2018 crop when farmers delivered a near record of 1.274 million tonnes of cane. Yet, due to the low market prices, their hard-work didn't yield them anywhere near a record payout.

Those prices remained low for the following crop year, so once again, even though the industry performed its best, with 1.317 million tonnes of delivered and mill, the foreign direct earnings from the sugar produced weren't that exciting. 

That's the context of the start of this crop season, and now, the farmers have to also soldier through the financial pain caused by the collective loss of 300 thousand tonnes of cane, due to last year's drought.  

But, they might get some relief with better prices on the world market this time around. Yesterday, ASR/BSI's Mac McLachlan described for us the current state of that market:

Mac McLachlan - VP, International Relations, ASR Group
"It's projected that the global market will be in a production deficit this year. So, there will be less sugar produced than is needed in the world. Unfortunately, at the moment, there are still very large stocks of sugar in some countries, for example in India and elsewhere, that they're waiting for the prices of sugar to go up so that they can then sell into the market. So, until those sugar stocks are used up, we're expecting that the market values will be still suppressed. However, market values have been rallying in recent days, and once those sugar stocks are used up, we would expect to see market prices moving up."

You'll also remember that the Belize government has negotiated with the Taiwanese Government for a quota for Belize's sugar.  We note that Guatemala has already worked out its quota with Taiwan.