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We found out a little about the scale of the corn industry and its exports when we spoke via zoom conference call to Gilly Canton Jr, the GM of Cayo Grain and Agro Supply Limited:

Gilly Canton Jr. - GM, Cayo Grain & Supply Ltd.
"I don't know the exact numbers on the value on cattle but I can tell you that before the next crop is harvested we have almost 500 thousand bags of corn to move, that's about $12 million worth of corn that we need to move. And if we move it we have to do 3 to 5 trucks a day coming across our border between now and September. If we don't get that we aren't gonna move that corn before the next crop. So, the way it works is you harvest corn twice for the year. You harvest corn in April and you harvest corn in November and then you are storing it for 4 to 6 months and selling it a little bit as you go. Now the trick is, and this is the big trick, in my case I'm okay for this year but there may be other ffarmers that might not be okay. You need enough to put in the next crop. So, you have to have enough money in place in order to put in the next crop."

Jules Vasquez- Reporter
"How important is this and how important is it, to not make it impossible, because it's not like we are the only place in the world that grows corn."

Gilly Canton Jr.
"It's extremely important that we make this trade. A lot of money has been invested in preparing fields, in clearing forests, in preparing fields in order to meet demand from Guatemala. If we are not careful what is happening in the US, the US plants 90 million acres of corn, Belize is 6 million acres. They plant 90 million acres of corn and with COVID 19 and the world crisis, their corn prices are dropping. If these guys arive on the west coast of Guatemala, if it becomes cheap enough, they will turn away from Belize and just go get their corn on the west coast."

Jules Vasquez
"In the north how they do it is you unhitch your trailer, a Belizean towhead a Belizean driver brings it in. But as I understand it, these guys are saying that they can't buy the corn, site unseen, and the price is negotiated with some of the vendors, with some of the sellers, the price is negotiated right there at the farms. Is this a realistic consideration, in terms of insisting that they have to come personally with their trucks, they can't let some other driver do it?"

Gilly Canton Jr.
"Everything that you mentioned is absolutely true. As we load corn, they are looking at the corn. I remember we have had situations where we are loading the corn and they say the corn is too dusty you need to put a fan on it. We go and get a big fan and we put the fan on it to blow some of the dust off. So, all of that is true. We can work around all of it, we can come up with a system that works but we need a little time. What is difficult, I think is a suddens stop, that's the issue. It's not working right now, we don't want to shut down the economy so how do we keep it going until we have a system we like in place. I think there has to be some compromise there, I would say. We can't risk our population. I understand the concern is COVID19 coming across the border. We have to be able to say, 'okay, can we work with risk mitigation?'. Health is looking at putting someone there to screen. So, we have to put mitigation factors in place and keep it moving."

That footage was courtesy Cayo Grain and Agro Supply Limited and Valley of Peace Farms.