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These bananas, produced by local small farmers, were loaded onto barges and transported to larger ships that waited a distance in deeper waters.

This was around the time when the Toledo was highly productive and considered the breadbasket of the colony.

Apart from bananas, sugar was also a major industry in Toledo for about 70 years starting around the late 1800s. In the early 1900s, there was also the harvesting of cohune nuts by TOPCO (Tropical Oil Productis Company) a German-American company, for export of charcoal and oil to Europe. Boatloads, and later truckloads, of pigs were also transported from Maya villages to Belize City around the mid 1900s to 1970s. There was also the rice industry in the mid 1900s to 1970s.

An article from "Punta Gorda Jottings" in the Belize Billboard, Oct. 6, 1946, featuring an excerpt from a prize-winning essay by Gwen Haynes titled, "Punta Gorda in 1946". The excerpt presented an overview of Punta Gorda, including the thriving industries of banana, grapefruit, rice, and sugar in the district around that time. The other section of the news in this column reports about a Grow More Food Campaign, the increase in demand for rice, and the challenges of farmers during the "cashless lapse between crops." Click here for a larger version of the article which is easier to read.

Top photograph courtesy BARS

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