90
91
Bel-Car Export & Import Company Limited
Bel
-Car
Export & Import
Company Limited
beans and more
I
n the early 1950s, a community of Mennonites em-
igrated from Mexico to the Spanish Lookout area
of Belize. Today, there are about 3,000 members
of that community, many who have become vital
contributors to the economic growth of their adopted
country, and who, as farmers, provide most of its pro-
duce, including meat and dairy, poultry and eggs, as
well as grain and legumes. The climate and wet con-
ditions in the Spanish Lookout area is especially ideal
for beans and corn.
Bel-Car, which stands for Belize-Caribbean, is a
cooperative growing and distribution company that
was started in 2000 by a group of about 200 of those
farmers from Spanish Lookout. “These farmers had
been growing beans for the country for a good while,
and there was more than the country could consume,”