New emphasis is being placed on cassava as a crop to reduce the country’s food import bill and earn foreign exchange.
Acting chief executive officer of the Barbados Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (BADMC), Glendene Bartlett, said yesterday they were in discussions on packaging and exporting cassava flour to Canada.
“We are pushing this and we hope to have this completed within a month. We already export some to Bermuda but we have to increase capacity to export to Canada,” she said.
The BADMC, the Barbados Manufacturers’ Association and five companies – Good Times Snacks; Wibisco; Purity Bakeries; AG’s Bread Inc and Baker’s Mart – yesterday signed a Memorandum of Understanding at the Ministry of Agriculture, Graeme Hall, Christ Church, to launch a new cassava project.
Minister of Agriculture Dr David Estwick said trials were scheduled to start today among the companies to test and see how best to use the flour and how the end products would taste in comparison to what Barbadians were already accustomed to. (CA)
