Coconuts: You can find vendors selling them on the roadside all over the country. And for those who don't like to buy, it's not too hard to grow a coconut tree or two in your yard. Indeed, the tree is rugged, hardy and durable, designed by nature to withstand hurricanes, and to find nutrients in even the poorest soil – even on the beach.

That's why it is referred to as the Tree of Life and today a stakeholder workshop was held to discuss ways to improve and boost the coconut industry in Belize. We met with several of the coordinators today at the George Price Centre in Belmopan and they told us about the setbacks and solutions in this nascent industry:

Anil Sinha - CARDI Country Representative

"Today's main thing is stakeholders consultation. Which they will discussing the the stakeholders what are their needs, what are their challenges and what needs to be done. And based on that a follow up programme will be developed in 4 steps: marketing, production and productivity, information access and some financial also."

Courtney Weatherburne

"When you say you are going to meet with stakeholders in the coconut industry and find ways to improve the industry, what do you mean by that? Improve it how?"

Manuel Trujillo - Focal Point, Belize Coconut Industry

"The main stakeholders here are involved in the planning and consultation process are processors, investors. You have growers, producers and other people who are involved in value adding. Now in terms of the industry - the industry is growing very fast. There's a lot of investment right now - we have over 2,000 acres of coconut in production in the country. Last year, based on the statistics that we from the ministry is about 8 million nuts that we produce. But that is expected to double. One of the limitations is that we do not have enough planting materials in the country. So we are importing from Mexico, hybrid varieties. The investors are there, they are putting in their money and they're growing the industry."

Maurice Wilson - CARDI, Monitoring and Evaluation

"The objective of the project is to prepare the regional and national industries for takeoff. There is lot of work to be done, the industry at the moment is reasonably disorganised, plagued by pests diseases and need for alternative varieties based on the different product niches. So, this project merely seeks to set the foundation upon which the resuscitation of the regional industry could be based."

It is a 4 year regional project. Workshops have been concluded in Jamaica, Trinidad, and the Dominican Republic, among others. It is being funded by the EU and the total cost for the regional project is 3.5 million Euros.