The role of the Monitoring and Coordination unit of SIRDI is to enhance capacities of sugar cane industry stakeholders to plan the development and implementation of a Sugar Industry Management Information System (SIMIS) for coordination and monitoring. SIMIS is being developed through a collaborative framework that includes key industry stakeholders who are the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association (BSCFA), Belize Sugar Industries/American Sugar Refinery (BSI/ASR), Sugar Cane Production Committee (SCPC) and Sugar Industry Research and Development Institute (SIRDI).

SIMIS will improve the capacity of stakeholders in the sugar industry to coordinate and monitor key priority areas for improvement in decision making. In addition staff of BSCFA, BSI/ASR, SCPC and SIRDI will have enhanced capacities to collect, validate and disseminate better agricultural statistics and analyse deficiencies in the collection and dissemination of agriculture sector statistics in the service of evidence-based policy-making. SIMIS will assist with managing, coordinating, monitoring and providing support to the collection of relevant agriculture statistics.

The Action will lead to improved capacity in GIS technology and database management to improve operational efficiencies and services provided to the sector through the Sugar Industry Management Information System (SIMIS). Decision making will also be enhanced by providing information products such as reports; spatial analysis; farmer registry information and maps that can be accessible to all major stakeholders in the sugar industry for supporting strategic objectives determined by the stakeholders and plans endorsed by the Sugar Industry.

SIMIS is being built in two phases that include 1. Creation of a cane parcel dataset, farmer identification system and establishment of a governance and management framework and 2. Building the SIMIS infrastructure, developing cane estimate process, build and operate harvest management system and developing related proposals (Aerial photo, Digital Elevation Models etc.). SIMIS will result in capacity building, promotion and stakeholder awareness program, dissemination of information and monitoring and evaluating results.

The methodology currently being employed to establish a fully functional SIMIS will lead to extraction of critical industry data at every step of the value chain. This data will be stored at SIRDI as a central repository for industry critical data and used for data mining and business intelligence. It will also be used to optimize all functions of the value chain from land preparation, variety selection, proper farm planning, ratoon maintenance, harvesting and cane delivery at the mill.

The SIMIS project is being developed with industry stakeholders and financial support from the EU.