Dominica top priority

While the Barbados office of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) is committed to helping all islands in the region with rebuilding the agriculture sector, which is vital to the development of any small island developing state (SIDS), the top priority right now is on Dominica.

This is according to Sub-Regional Co-ordinator for the FAO, Lystra Fletcher-Paul, who spoke to The Barbados Advocate prior to the start of the lecture to mark World Food Day 2017 under the theme ‘Change the Future of Migration: Invest in Food Security and Rural Development’, which took place yesterday at the Ministry of Agriculture headquarters, Greame Hall, Christ Church.

Accordingly, they have had experts going into that island at different intervals to conduct needs assessments for the various areas such as disaster risk management, agriculture and fisheries; and they are also looking at hiring a national consultant who can stay there for a period of three months and then an international consultant, as well as an emergency specialist who can stay for a year to help rebuild the agriculture sector.

“Well what we are trying to do is that we have a team in Dominica right now, our forestry officer is there. We have an emergency focal point and disaster risk management specialist who has just come back after two weeks; our fisheries officer is going next week and what we want to do, is that, we are hiring a national consultant who will represent FAO for at least three months, and an international consultant and an emergency person who will be there on the ground for a year helping them with all of the activities that are required to rebuild the agriculture sector,” he explained.

They will also be working with organisations that have the equipment to help clear the land, said Fletcher-Paul.

“Another important priority for them is land clearing because a lot of trees have fallen on the land, so we are providing chain saws and we are working with companies that have bulldozers to help clear the land, so that they can start operating on their farms as soon as possible.”

The Sub-Regional Co-ordinator stated that they recognise that the FAO cannot do all of this work alone and thus, they are committed to working with their partner organisations such as Inter-American Institute for Co-operation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI).