Stop blame game
Farmers are being urged to stop the blame game.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and Water Resource Management, Elsworth Reid, said that the farming sector should not take the position of blaming God for their misfortunes in times of drought and extreme rains.
“People are very ready to speak of acts of God, when in fact they themselves or the authorities at the national level did not find it fit to put in place measures to mitigate against such extreme conditions, or even to be more resilient in times of such conditions,” he stressed.
“We do not have the River Euphrates or the River Nile running through our backyards, and even if this was so, these rivers can overflow their banks and cause destruction in times of heavy rains.”
Reid, who was at the time addressing yesterday’s launch of the Weather and Climate Ready Nation Programme at the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, also observed that right here in the Caribbean, there are lessons to be learnt from what happened in neighbouring Dominica and St Vincent two year ago, during floods brought on by extreme weather that was not anticipated.
He therefore acknowledged that any physical and/or economic development plan for a country in the Caribbean would fall short in design if measures to reduce the vulnerability of domestic food production – namely primary agriculture – against extreme climate or weather events are not included in that plan.
“From what I have observed, I do not believe that serious consideration has ever been given to this aspect of agriculture in any country in the Caribbean in any development plan.
“You may only hear after it happens, for example, of what proportion of a country’s livestock or crop production has been destroyed after extreme weather by way of flooding. When that information is given, it appears clearly that
little forethought had been placed in the likelihood of something like that happening when designing national drainage systems or even taking time to train farmers how to design and install their own systems to protect their produce,” he said.
The PS, who is the Director of the Board of Governors at CIMH, also told participants that he doubts very much whether there is any national drive in any country in the region as yet, to train farmers on how to design physical structures on farms, and how they can use what they find in plenty during wet times to mitigate against drought during times of dry. (TL)