The Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS) is setting up an export committee to ensure there is better coordination in exporting local produce.
On Thursday, during the launch of Agrofest 2024 at Radisson Aquatica Resort, Chief Executive Officer James Paul said although exporting local offerings was nothing new, national coordination was lacking and there was no system in place where producers were required to meet certain targets.
He said that while the BAS held quarterly meetings with its various membership groups in an effort to help farmers improve their operational efficiency, exporting food required that certain processes were in place and international standards were met.
Expanding on Paul’s points, President of the association Henderson WIlliams said that having a committee in place would ensure the structure and organisation needed to facilitate more intra-regional and inter-regional trade was present.
“There’s a lot involved in export. Let’s just say, for example, that we wanted to export chicken on the cruise ship, and we’ve been able to do that successfully, there is testing involved, there is certification involved, you have to have a laboratory [and so on]. I must compliment the Ministry of Agriculture in terms of the quality of the lab that they have, in terms of the product that we’re offering and in terms of the quantities [that we are producing],” he said, adding that there were also a lot of entities farmers had to partner with to get their products export-ready when things such as branding and labelling are considered.
“So we thought it was important to ensure that we had a committee who would pull it together,” he said.
As it relates to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) 25 by 2025 initiative, which aims to reduce the region’s food imports by 25 per cent by the year 2025, Williams said the establishment of this committee would augur well for that arrangement.
“But with the 25 by 2025 initiative, it is pretty much looking to improve exports through CARICOM . . . so we want to improve what we’re doing in relation to exports . . . . So that’s something that we’re going to be spending a lot of time on and we’re going to have that committee busy to ensure that we increase our exports regionally and extra-regionally,” he said.
Meanwhile, Paul added that the weather could impact the sustainability of the initiative.
“Certainly we’re going to have a challenge because we did not expect the weather this year in terms of the heat. We have some rains and we are managing nicely with the rains but the heat is something that, of course, we never factored in, in any major way. So, that in itself would have caused some farmers some concern.
“Across the sectors, we are still feeling the impact of COVID-19 in terms of where we are in our productive sectors, so farmers right now are trying to cope. But certainly, I think that after we sort of put the necessary investments in, we should be able to do it. But the 25 by 25 initiative, that is something we are trying to work on a long-term basis. But to say at this point in time that we are really there [where we need to be], it’s difficult to say that,” Paul said.
Williams added that the record temperatures the island and the rest of the world experienced during the summer period, especially in August and September, are expected to continue, and it was important that the BAS, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, focused on implementing climate mitigation strategies to help reduce the effects of climate change on the operations of farmers.
He said the association was working with the ministry to help farmers invest in shade houses and greenhouses so they could produce adequate yields year-round. (SZB)
