Paul: More affordable Agrofest this year

Patrons heading out to Queen’s Park for any of the three days of this island’s premier agricultural event, Agrofest, will be paying less at the door.

This is according to the CEO of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS), James Paul, who spoke with The Barbados Advocate on the sidelines of the Agrofest ’18 Food Vendors Workshop, themed “Youth: Farming the Future”, which was held recently at the Dining Club

“Last year had its unique challenges, but I think that we are getting over that. As a matter of fact, I think that last year had the smallest attendance, I think in terms of schools, but we are seeing now a renewed interest on the part of the schools and I really feel that the teachers now are pushing the whole concept of agriculture more in the schools and children seem to be more interested. But that was the major area that we were disappointed in last year,” Paul said.

When asked what he believed was responsible for the poor turnout in 2017, the BAS head stated, “I think that could have been because of the economy. But we have actually lowered the price of the tickets this year. So hopefully that in itself would address that particular issue. So we are making it more affordable for people to attend Agrofest.”

There will also be a lot of new offerings as well, Paul revealed.

“Last year, I think we got more animals that we actually expected and we expect that this year the same trend would continue. The thing is really, what we want to do is to ensure that we have a set of activities happening on each day that basically would keep people involved, would keep people coming back to see exactly what it is that we are doing in agriculture. These are the main things,” he added.