BASSETERRE St. Kitts, February 7th 2012 - Joining a flurry of new agriculture-related initiatives in St. Kitts-Nevis, faculty and staff at Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College (CFBC) will launch a new container program to help establish better methods for agricultural outreach while also experiencing the pleasures of home gardening, improving their diet, and lowering their food bill.
Known as the Take 5 Program, the new initiative launches on Monday, February 13, when participants will carry five containers to the CFBC campus on Burdon Street in Basseterre and receive five free seedlings of spinach or pak choy on a first-come, first-served basis. Students and faculty from the CFBC Agriculture Unit and the Provisions Project in Non-Traditional Agricultural Research will provide soil, along with spinach and pak choy seedlings in any combination of five plants, while supplies last. Take 5 organizers will also make any necessary modifications to containers such as drilling holes for proper drainage.
In return, participants agree to maintain the plants for six weeks and receive regular updates via cell phone and/or email from plant specialists. Program organizers will send pictures of model plants grown at the college and ask participants to respond each week with pictures and short messages giving feedback about how their plants are progressing.
Dr. Leighton Naraine, who initially organized the program, says he was inspired by a local saying. “I learned very quickly from my students upon arriving in St. Kitts that, as they say, ‘If it’s free, take two!’ What we are saying with this program is take FIVE! Hopefully, this will get a positive reception and move us in the direction of the many feeding themselves rather than the few feeding the many.”
Another Take 5 organizer, Mr. Stuart LaPlace, has been conducting experiments in organic, hydroponic and “hybridponic” cultivation for several years and sees this program as a step towards implementing the improved methods developed in the CFBC test gardens. “We want to show people in St. Kitts and Nevis that growing food is easier, faster, and more productive than they probably imagined it could be. It’s to help people who don’t necessarily feel they have a green thumb to get a start. Our goal is to get a test group hooked on home gardening, show them how to propagate their own seedlings after this crop is finished, and then spread the word far and wide to the general public in coming months.”
Dr. Hermia Morton-Anthony, president of CFBC, emphasizes the long-term benefits of Take 5 for both CFBC and the federation. “The nutrition and economic benefits of home gardening will be immediately obvious, but we also see a stronger relationship between the college and our surrounding community coming out of this program. The dialogue between specialists in the Agriculture Unit and participants growing their plants at home will be very lively and even a bit competitive, but that will insure that the communication continues beyond the initial enthusiasm.
Ultimately, what we are modeling and perfecting is a better means of linking our specialist knowledge in the college with actual people with concrete needs in the general public. As our programs expand in scope, this communication system using cell phones and email will be critically important in allowing CFBC to provide needed information and other services to the people of the federation.”
The Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College is the only local Tertiary Level Institution in St. Kitts and Nevis. It offers a wide range of Associate’s Degree programs that include traditional Academic, Technical and Vocational Education, Teacher Education, Health Science, and Adult and Continuing Education. To meet the growing needs of developmental initiatives for nation building, it is now transitioning to university status and has the mandate to introduce Agricultural Education to its curriculum.
The Take 5 Program is supported as well by the Provisions Project Team in Non-Traditional Agriculture.
Provisions is a multi-disciplinary group of CFBC faculty who are joined by visiting professor Dr. Kevin Meehan from the University of Central Florida. The Provisions Project seeks to enhance the profile of CFBC by converting the past several years of experimental results in non-traditional agriculture into conference papers, ministry reports, scholarly articles, and popular education resources. Take 5 is part of the popular education and outreach work undertaken by the Provisions Project Team. Take 5 follows on the heels of several agriculture-related programs recently launched in the federation, including a new Agro-Tourism destination near Sandy Point, a new shadehouse at the Youth Skills farm in Needsmust, and “Time to Plant,” a mobile app created in St. Kitts that offers planting calendars and growing tips for popular local produce. Through Take 5, CFBC takes its place in what Minister of Agriculture Dr. Timothy Harris recently referred to as “agriculture in change mode.”
For more information, contact Mr. Stuart LaPlace or Dr. Leighton Naraine at 465-2856
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