Weir: Tremendous opportunities available in agriculture

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Indar Weir, is encouraging all schools to get their students involved in the 4-H programme.

He made the call during the closing ceremony of the agricultural focused Camp Progress, while expressing that he was pleased that the 4-H movement in Barbados is still around.

Founded in 1982, the Barbados 4-H Foundation has been enabling young people to build self-esteem and strong interpersonal skills while acquiring knowledge and basic skills related to agriculture and ecology, through community activities, apprenticeships and self-teaching.

“That was one of the opportunities through which we could have helped our children to understand more about agriculture,” he stressed.

Minister Weir noted that there are tremendous opportunities available to Barbadians in agriculture.

In fact, he expressed that “These are very exciting times for Barbados,” highlighting initiatives being undertaken by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

“IICA is conducting training where you can get a national certification in agriculture and then the FAO is also helping us to do things such as the expansion of our Black Belly Sheep population, where the skin can be used for making leather.”

“If we can develop that enough and get someone like Rihanna carrying a leather bag or belt that is made from Barbadian black belly sheep – you can start to imagine the potential that we have in terms of use of black belly sheep and the black belly sheep skin to make leather,” Minister Weir said.