The Barbados Advocate

Essentials • Markets • Today's Paper • Business Monday • Subscriber Services

Top News > local

Ease for farmers

10/27/2009

By Shawn Cumberbatch

AN ease is on the way for farmers still reeling from increased water rates.
Both Minister of Agriculture Senator Haynesley Benn and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA) Barbados representative, Joseph Peltier, said all categories of local farmers would be getting access to cheaper water as a result of renewed efforts to harvest rain water.

Water tanks to make this possible already exist at the Spring Hall Land Lease Project and Rock Hall, and yesterday Prime Minister David Thompson officially opened a new water harvesting tank at the 20-acre Balls Plantation in Christ Church which has been transformed by its owners, the Apostolic Teaching Centre (ATC), into the new $1.3 million ATC Sustainable Agricultural Development Project.

Benn said he was excited about the prospect of water harvesting and he told the Prime Minister there was a need for large sums of money to get this going, especially if those in the agricultural community were keen on it.

“I am saying to the farming community, just show me the demonstration of interest that you would want to join with us in harvesting the water off the established buildings and storing it for future use on dairy and pigs and to irrigate vegetables,” Benn stated.

“And I would want to say to the Prime Minister, I need an extra few millions of dollars to place at the disposal of the farmers that can assist them in acquiring funding to erect these on their farms. It is something that I promised to do, but I am going to ensure that the farmers have demonstrated that keen interest. It is something that will work towards their benefit,” he added.

Peltier said IICA, working with the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank and the Food and Agricultural Organisation, had been looking to “harvest rain water in Caribbean countries including Barbados and to ensure that the water is made available at affordable prices to the farming community in particular”.

He said the Balls site was signal of a of re-initiated effort in Barbados to develop concept of rain water harvesting and the tank there was a result of that.

“This tank is 18 feet in diametre, six feet tall, it can go up to eight feet tall or nine feet, it holds approximately 14 to 15 000 gallons of water, it was built at a cost of 75 cents per gallon and given the recent increase in water rates it is going to impact positively on the farming community. One farmer told me recently that his cost of production is about one third water. In other words one third of the cost of production is water and that is a pig farmer,” he noted.

“So you can imagine if this can virtually eliminate that one third cost of production how much more competitive it is going to be, not just in terms of the bottom line, but also in terms of the impact it will have on affordable food prices for the population of Barbados,” he observed.

The IICA official suggested that as a result of having more affordable water available to them the price of food would “necessarily have to decline, it will become more affordable, will become more accessible, and the profitability of the farmer will increase”.

“It will also enhance our food security, in particular it will impact on the young people. We are prepared at IICA to work with...the church and other faith-based organisations and work with the Ministry of Agriculture to ensure that this tank is made available to the farming community, to poultry farmers, to crop farmers, to pig farmers, and to dairy farmers to ensure that they can use the water effectively and reduce the cost of production,” Peltier said.

Indices

as of close 9/15/2009


Local	3404.30	-

Cross-List	1665.14	-

Composite	847.81	-