Community Markets: Trade Your Produce

On several occasions, you may have heard the term “grow what you eat and eat what you grow”. This is a practice that the Government of Belize is trying to have the Belizean population adopt as a way to ease the financial pangs of inflation. Minister of Agriculture, Food Security, and Enterprise, Jose Abelardo Mai, explains that one idea he is tinkering around is to provide Belizeans with seedlings so they can grow their own organic produce, which can then be traded with one another. Here’s how he explained it.

Hon. Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture: “And I think somebody was telling me in other countries what they’re doing is that if I have my backyard and I plant tomatoes and if you have a backyard and you plant cabbages on one particular day, weekend, you bring it to a little market site and instead of selling it we exchange. You give cabbage and I give you the tomatoes and so on and that’s how people in countries are now managing the high cost of food and it’s a good idea. We can adopt that in Belize. So these are just things that come to mind and what we can do.”