During the last week of March, the Delegation participated in a 4-day technical mission together with the Belize Livestock Producers Association (BLPA), the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry, Environment, Sustainable Development and Climate Change(MAFFESDCC), IICA, CATIE and the IDB MIF.
Belmopan, Belize. The mission was a follow up by the IDB MIF to a project concept submitted by IICA, developed through a collaboration between IICA, CATIE and the BLPA. The group visited a cross section of small, medium and large cattle farmers and met with several key stakeholders.
The project concept proposes to support the sustainable development of Belize’s livestock sector through the promotion of climate-smart livestock and green technologies which include among others, use of water-stress tolerant grasses and legumes and protein banks and water harvesting technologies. Activities seek to strengthen the BLPA to improve the services it provides to its members, train farmers and extension agents for delivering climate-smart innovations for sustainable intensification in livestock farms, as well as setting up the demonstration training plots with climate smart systems.
The mission successfully defined the objective of the project which is to: Increase the productivity of cattle farmers in a climate change scenario, through sustainable intensified systems of production, that will lead to improve farmers’ incomes as well as contribute to a diversification on the country’s export products. A plan of action was also developed with the aim of achieving approval of the project before the end of 2017.
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