Ministry boosting local crop production; cementing foreign partnerships to satisfy import diversification

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Nutritional Security is focused on increasing local production to reduce this island’s dependence on food imports.
Making this clear during the Estimates debate on Friday, Chief Agricultural Officer Keeley Holder said that with 30 per cent of these imports being agricultural produce, the ministry is focused on meeting this demand in the local market through a three-pronged approach.
“We have to maximize whatever it is that we can do locally, and that is the agricultural portion of the food import bill, and specifically, that’s where our CARICOM 25 (per cent) by 2025 comes in,” she said.
Speaking from the well of Parliament, Holder indicated there are 19 crops that Barbados can focus on in the sector.
“We also want to focus on boosting our milk production, maximizing our pork production, our lamb production, maximizing farm fish, which is all of the work on aquaculture as well as shrimp, and also maximizing on bananas and plantains. That’s the first thing and the approach that we’re taking, is to tackle food security at the household level with the CARE programme, tackle it at the national level with farming with the FEED programme and our accelerated growth programme, which looks to help experienced farmers to accelerate and maximize production in Barbados,” she said.
In addition, she highlighted that partnerships with Guyana and Suriname will give access to items to complement our local food production.
“The third cog in the wheel that we need to look at is our import diversification. For the products that we can’t do in Barbados, or in our Caricom territories, then we need to diversify and ensure that we have a system that if one source of our food supply, which we can’t get regionally, has been shut down such as Miami, what are our options? Do we diversify to ensure that product can come in through the port of Panama? Do we diversify to our African partners – Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, where we are building relationships?
“So we are strengthening those South-South relationships to ensure that we are diversifying our food supply and that we’re touching on all aspects of our food security,” she added.
Holder stressed that with such an approach, food dependency will be created in the local market first and then built out to partners.
(JB)