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And while the screwworm affects cattle - the wild fusarium fungus is doing major damage to the sugar cane industry. It has affected tens of thousands of acres of cane fields - and is already seriously lowering sugar production as a percentage of the cane that's been delivered. Today the agricultural minister said the fusarium fungus is killing Mexico and hurting Belize:
Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"Mexico is seeing a severe drop in production in sugarcane and sugar. Sugarcane yield and sugar. The TCTS is horrible. And we expect probably similar fate in Belize. We have a large area under infection from Fussarium and the little we harvested so far shows a drop in the purity drop in the TCTS in sugar."
"So we expect it to get worse. It is a matter we need to address not only Belize but together with Mexico, because the disease moves and so we need to take serious action and there's no magic bullet that will cure Fussarium it is here to stay with us. We have to engage the other countries that have had experience in managing this and to see how we can to start to make that transition towards the integrated system."
Reporter:
"The fact remains that at this time, TCTS stands at 20.9 a what I recall correctly is saying. Is that at all a concern for you right now? We are seeing this track from the beginning."
Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"The farmers get paid for their sugar delivered not Sugar cane. So if my sugar cane, 20 tons of cane to give you one ton of sugar, the farmer is losing money. All right. And so these are I said in the past I've said that the decision to start the crop is a technical one. It has to have to do with the quality, the quality and the maturity sugar cane and the weather, the weather has been very difficult for us."
"The sugar rules were able to repair them in time. Contracts have been given, contracts have started and stopped because if they continue working on the roads and the roads are damaged in one week, then they will get blamed for a poor job. And you can't even access the the mall pits right now because the weather is so bad. The prime minister understands situation."
"And he has committed another $1,000,000 to repair Sugar Roads. So we have all intentions to repair sugar roads when the weather permits."
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