BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - DEVELOPING farmers into progresive small businessmen and businesswomen, is part of the Government’s new thrust under the recently launched ‘25 by 25’ initiative - which aims to reduce the food import bill in the Federation.
Under the new initiative - which is part of CARICOM’s push to reduce the region’s US$6B food import - St. Kitts and Nevis will now focus on the production of specific crops and livestock to ensure they are in abundance, thus reducing the $200M local import bill by 25 percent by 2025.
Should that target be achieved, approximately $50M will be saved and spread across the fisher and farming sectors.
With that in mind, the Government is now pushing to ensure that farmers are more business oriented to benefit from this initiative.
During his recent appearance on WINN FM’s ‘Inside the News’ programme, Minister of Agriculture and Small Business, Samal Duggins announced that new avenues are being opened for capitalization by local farmers.
“We are now looking at farmers in a real way,” he said.
This comes as reports have surfaced that farmers want more training opportunities to enhance their skill sets in the area of business, thus being able to package items for export, and to better understand how they can prevent wastage and ensure that items can be used for end products.
“I think for too long they have been left out of the business discussion. So when you have training for small businessmen and women, and when you have different opportunities afforded to small businessmen and women, farmers and creatives are somehow on the outline sector,” lamented Duggins.
To remedy that problem, the Ministry is now pushing to ensure that training and finances are available for those within the sectors.
“We are now embracing all of that. We are in discussions with Development Bank, National Bank, and a number of other financial institutions to provide low interest loans for all small business people, including farmers and creatives,” the Minister said.
In the area of training, the Minister noted that sessions are being conducted to “teach them about financial management, marketing and a host of other areas - cost of production. How do you cost output based on what you put in”.
This comes at an opportune time for the farmers as they will now seek to push more locally grown produce within the marketplace.
