Farm data gap ‘hampering’ food production drive

The government’s drive to reduce the food import bill is being hampered by a lack of data from farmers on what they are planting, when crops are being planted and when they are expected to be harvested, farm minister Dr Shantal Munro-Knight has told Barbados TODAY.

She said: “One of our issues that we have within the ministry is not being able to get sufficient data from farmers. That will help us with our production targets. If we don’t know what the farmers are planting, when they are, when they’re going to plant them, and then the harvest, it then becomes difficult to set targets and then also as well see where we are and that is one of the things that we’ve been butting up against consistently.”

Dr Munro-Knight said the lack of information makes it difficult for the Ministry of Agriculture to establish production targets and track its progress under its crop escalation programme.

“Every time that I ask the team what is the baseline for this target, then it becomes difficult for them in some instances, not in all, like there are some sweet potatoes and yams, etc that we may know and because as a ministry we do a lot of that planting, but that is one of the things that we have to be able to look at.”

The ministry is monitoring 16 crops identified under the crop escalation programme while investigating shortages of some staples, including sweet potatoes, she said.

The ministry has introduced 32 varieties of sweet potatoes to increase production, “which will allow us to be able to expand and to expose Barbadians to different varieties, but also now allow us to cater again to the tourist market, to the hotel market, etc who may want specific varieties as well”.

Dr Munro-Knight also gave an update on a programme to boost onion production, revealing that the ministry’s recently commissioned onion dryer has successfully completed its trial phase.

“Now we understand just in terms of load, but also in terms of varieties and those sorts of things we did that trial over a period of a period of time. So then now from the next planting period, we will then be rolling out our full onion programme and that will help, like I said, move to that part of bringing our onion imports down.”

The ministry expects to open its tissue culture laboratory at CARDI in Kirtons, St Philip, before the end of the year to provide farmers with clean planting material and new crop varieties, she announced.

“What that does is make sure that farmers have clean planting materials and then like I said, new varieties as well. So that is going to be a major plus as well for the crop escalation programme.”

(LG)