OFF TO A GOOD START

Participants of the Government’s Farmers Empower-ment and Enfran-chisement (FEED) Programme are steps closer to putting their new agribusiness and expertise to work for their own betterment.

This follows yesterday’s handing-over ceremony where 15 participants of the programme’s agro-forestry course received their starter kits. These kits comprised boots, overalls, chemical gloves, garden gloves and 70 fruit trees, which included soursop, gooseberry and golden apple trees. They were also allocated three acres of land as well as provided with technical support.

Manager of the Agricultural Services Division of the Barbados Agricultural Develop-ment and Marketing Corporation (BADMC), Dr. Jamekal Andwele, explained that those receiving the kits completed three months of training prior to the day’s ceremony. Kits were also given to those involved in apiculture. These comprised boxes and the personal protective equipment.

Andwele further explained that the day’s recipients were the first of the programme’s 100 participants to be given their kits and land.

“In this first training cohort, we trained over 100 participants. So not only agroforestry, in apiculture, aquaponics, greenhouse production [and] open field production. So today is the first official day of the allocation of lands to some of the agroforestry participants, but from this day, World Food Day, we will begin to allocate lands to all 100 participants who would have completed this first training cohort.”

Andwele pointed out that the three acres of land will not only be assigned to participants in areas in St. Andrew, but in the Pine Basin; the River Plantation in St. Philip; Bath, St. John; and in St. Lucy. He added the crop product participants will be getting some seeds, some drip lines and some fertilisers.

His comments came while speaking to the media at the Soil Conservation Unit at Haggats, St. Andrew. Present for the day’s proceedings was Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Indar Weir. He presented license agreements and fruit trees to agroforestry participants, Dario Joe and Cherita Olton. He also presented an apiculture kit to Colin Holligan. After this, he visited Bawdens where Joe and Olton planted fruit trees on the land allocated to them. A visit was also made to the Greenland Livestock Research Station where Weir presented a Black Belly ram to Bernice Chase.

Addressing the media, the Agriculture Minister said he was pleased “to see this project become a reality and that you, the participants, can now move on to the next phase where you now can start your lives as businesspeople doing agriculture, but at the same time achieving a number of things. One, you will help us with food security and that is for sure; and two, you can help us with the revege-tation of the Scotland District, which is absolutely critical; and three, if you are in fact successful and committed, then overall you give to us a new cadre of businesspeople in Barbados that will help us to mitigate climate change by the amount of trees that you are going to be planting over here in the Scotland District”. (MG)