CHARLESTOWN, Nevis – MINISTER of Agriculture in the Nevis Island Administration, Alexis Jeffers believes that opportunities exist for local produce to successfully compete with imported products.
Addressing the opening of the Department of Agriculture Open Day, Jeffers revealed that discussions with officials from hotels and restaurants on the island prefer to purchaselocal vegetables and fruits.
The Minister noted that higher production yields would decrease the current cost of production, making local produce more competitive.
“Support the farmers of Nevis who continue to produce fresh and high quality nutrient rich food. Even if you don’t want to do agriculture directly, there are support services that you can provide to farmers such as transportation, accounting and record-keeping, cleaning of weeds from around farms, agro-processing and so much more. There is the need to better integrate information and communication technologies into the sector, which in turn improves efficiency and we are looking for young and passionate people to do this,” said Jeffers.
According to Jeffers, his Ministry is eyeing the possibility of directly working with a core group of farmers to pushing specific products on the crop side.
“On the livestock side in the first instance we are pushing the increase in mutton production. We recognise that to transition successfully, farmers need increased access to technical and financial assistance to achieve further commercialization.
“We would be extremely happy to meet the food demands from the tourism industry. However, and most importantly, we have to feed the residents of our island. Our people, from both a health and economic perspective, deserve to have access to local nutrient rich and safe foods. We have seen in the news and in social media that strange things can happen in food production, such as the supply of plastic rice and plastic cabbages, we have waxy films and preservative chemicals on fruits and vegetables that are shipped to our shores,” added Jeffers.
Jeffers disclosed that they have begun the consultative process to address weaknesses and problems that exist in the sector.
He said they would be looking at policies and framework that are needed to support local farmers.
“The thing is, we want farmers to make food available and chastise them for not producing more. But we must acknowledge that farmers are also business people who are taking huge risks to make sure there is food available. We must continue to support them in facing the challenges such as pests and diseases which are prevalent, climate change, praedial larceny or stealing of produce at the harvesting stage, and effective marketing. If there are no rewards for our farmers when they work, we cannot expect continuity because this is not a charitable duty,” explained Jeffers.
The 2019 event was celebrated at the Elquemedo Willet Park under the theme, ‘Think Climate Smart, Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainability for our 25th Anniversary’.
