Graduates of the Hope Agricultural Training Institute could be given up to two acres of land to pursue farming, as Government moves to attract more young people into the sector.
Addressing the opening ceremony for the first batch of the institute’s full-time students at Hope Plantation in St Lucy yesterday, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Nutritional Security Dr Shantal Munro-Knight said the ministry was designing a programme that would provide graduates interested in becoming farmers with between one and two acres.
She said the initiative will give young people a deliberate pathway into farming after completing their studies.
Munro-Knight also announced that a world-class tissue culture laboratory is expected to open next month, providing clean plant material to enhance the quality of agriculture production.
A push is also on to encourage households to grow their own foods through backyard farming.
“We are reframing our programmes within the ministry tomorrow over in Deacons Farm where we will launch a programme which is to ensure that everyday households have the ability to grow something in their backyards. Agriculture would only mean something if Barbadians touch it, feel it, grow it. It will only mean something if we embrace it,” she said.
The ministry will also be adjusting its Farmers Empowerment and Enfranchisement Drive (FEED) programme, to make sure it is fit for purpose, as well as roll out initiatives for aqua processing, Munro-Knight added.
Embrace it
The minister said Barbados must embrace modern agriculture while retaining valuable traditional farming knowledge and practices as the country works to strengthen food security and make agriculture a greater driver of national development.
“It’s not always going to be all about the technology and the drones and everything like that. You gotta take some sun. That is what agriculture is.
“The first week when I came into agriculture, I spent three hours with a farmer on his farm, a Saturday morning around eight o’clock. What that showed me was that we can have the modern agriculture, but bring along the best tenets of the tradition of agriculture,” she said.
Munro-Knight said the Hope Agricultural Training Institute was an example of the type of partnerships Government was going after, which were meaningful and provided actual benefits to help deliver national development. (AJ)