BASSETERRE ST. KITTS (March 16, 2010) -- Senior Minister and Minister of Agriculture, Dr Timothy Harris, while thanking the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) for its support to the local agriculture sector, has challenged farmers to share ideas by working cooperatively to boost the federation’s food production.
“Farmers have to make a more serious effort to cooperate to help each other,” observed Dr Harris. “If you are not willing to help yourselves, how is it you are going to be asking others to help you. It was one of the lessons from the FAO that we are trying to bring bare in the national dispensation.”
Minister Harris made the remarks on Monday at the Department of Agriculture in LaGuerite where he handed over farming implements valued at $4,385 to crop tree and fruit farmers from both St. Kitts and Nevis, which is part of a Technical Cooperation Project of over $81,000 funded by the FAO.
He said that the government through the Department of Agriculture has been encouraging farmers to cooperate to work together as working together would bringing their limited experiences and knowledge and that way bring greater resources to the pool.
“Farmers then must work together cooperatively,” he reminded the assembled farmers and officials of the department from both St. Kitts and Nevis. “Food security comes in the main when people who are involved in food production are producing enough to meet the demands.”
Dr Harris explained that since the FAO is not a funding agency, one of the approaches which it has adopted is the approach called south-south cooperation, where nations share their expertise. He pointed out that the FAO has basically succeeded in doing so, based on the lessons it has learnt since it was established after the Second World War.
“We are many countries, some of us are advanced, rich and developed and some of us are developing,” the Minister said quoting from the FAO philosophy. “But even among those who are not as developed, they can do things through cooperation to help themselves. We (in St. Kitts and Nevis) need to do likewise to be able to share what we have, to ensure the success because we can’t always be looking externally outside of ourselves for the support.”
An amount of $76,950, from the same project, will go towards assisting rabbit farming in the Federation. Rabbit farmers who have formed an association in St. Kitts will start constructing the sheds to hold the rabbits shortly.
The short ceremony was chaired by the Director of Agriculture in St. Kitts, Ashton Stanley, who informed the farmers that monitoring and evaluation of the project was critically important as it is on those indicators that the country will be able to harness more support from agencies like the FAO and other allied agencies.
“So, when officers come to you and they seek information, it is not that we want to impose tax as some people usually indicate,” noted Stanley. “It is not that. The information that we seek is to seek more funding, or help for you.”
Others who addressed and gave advice to the farmers were Keithly Amory, the Director of Agriculture on Nevis, Paul Benjamin, an agronomist responsible for food and tree crop programme in St. Kitts, and Jeffrey Berry, the Livestock Extension Officer on St. Kitts.
