Global Courant 2023-05-26 04:31:07
Citrus growers warned that Honduras is on the brink of a shortage of oranges in the coming months due to the high costs of fertilizers, difficult access to credit for farmers.
“The high cost, because producing citrus quality is expensive, besides there is no support from the government at a technical and financial level,” said René Bendaña, producer of citrus.
“They have already closed the Colón processing plant, the only one there was; there is nowhere to put that fruit anymore, people are migrating from the cultivation of citrus to other crops because it is no longer profitable,” he said.
Twenty years ago, Honduras had more than 50,000 hectares cultivated, but with the passage of time production dropped and currently there are barely 12,000 hectares cultivated.
“After being exporters to Central America, now we are importing fruits from Mexico and Costa Rica,” said Bendaña.
He regretted that “the producer of citric small is not bankable, so you cannot provide the necessary food, implement the irrigation system because the banks do not finance this type of items”. In this sense, producers prefer to plant corn or beans to be able to survive”.
Regarding citrus imports, he pointed out that “there are no official figures, what I do know is that about three to four weekly containers of oranges from Costa Rica are entering. “If citriculture is not attended to as it should be, licking an orange in five years could be a luxury, look, we are already importing,” he assured.
