Wednesday, September 28, 2011

VACA PLATEAU FOREST RESERVE TO BE OPENED UP TO CONTROLLED FARMING IN BELIZE.

VACA FORESTRY RESERVE TO BE OPENED UP TO FARMERS

Whole bunch of acronyms of organizations involved with this venture of opening up the VACA Forest Reserve to private commercial enterprise. Already 15 BEEKEEPERS have been trained and issued bee keeping suits and materials. There are 13 men and 2 women going to be serving bee hives in the VACA FOREST RESERVE.

The concessionair is the Cayo Honey Quality Producers. They get about 5000 acres of forest reserve to place and move their hives about in. Lot of government branches claiming participation, plus the UN FAO and NGO´s. The acroynms listed in an article on this in the Belize Agriculture Report would make the Pentagon proud.
Friends for Conservation ( FCD ) is going to be operating a revolving fund and establish a market for the honey. Bees and honey are considered non invasive by the Forestry Department.

The second development is more mysterious. Apparently some farmers are going to be allowed to establish farms on a managed type of planning, instigated by FCD extension technicians and a CATIE/MesotTerra agronomist. Whatever those acronyms mean? The deal is they will farm in cooperation with Forestry management ( fat chance there in my opinion ). Will the farmers get land titles? Now that is an interesting question? So far, that second part seems to be just talk and paper bureaucratic talk. Sounds more like a GRANT funded bureaucratic excercise that will eventually die, when the GRANT FUNDS runs out.

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