Chief Agricultural Officer, Lennox Chandler out with members of the local farming community in the fields, at the Ministry’s Graeme Hall, Christ Church headquarters.
THE Ministry of Agriculture has been placing a heavy focus on the areas of research and development to better aid local farmers in successfully growing their crops.
Chief Agricultural Officer, Lennox Chandler, recently acknowledged the above, noting that the latest effort to aid farmers in boosting onion production in Barbados is a key example of the Ministry’s efforts in this area.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and Water Resource Management recently invited onion farmers to participate in a field day exercise at the Ministry’s Headquarters in Graeme Hall, Christ Church and at that event, officials of the Ministry discussed with the farmers, tips on farming and transplanting the crop. The field day followed the holding of an onion varietal trial by the Research Department of the Ministry at its Graeme Hall headquarters, which aimed to evaluate a combination of five to six varieties of yellow and red onions, sourced from Guatemala and The Netherlands.
Chandler said of the exercise, “We are focusing on our core responsibility, which is research and development and provision of technical information to the farming community.
“Since I took up the post, I made it clear that we are going to move in that direction, where we not only provide technical information, but we provide training. Because I always argue that you can go on the Internet and see anything, but with this interaction right now between the farmers and the researchers and the extension people, you can actually see the crop growing in Barbados, not a picture on the Internet. So this is where we need to go,” he further stressed.
He also stated, “One of the things that we are aiming to do over the next couple of months, is to have a series of training events, not only for crop production but in areas of pesticide management (etc.), so that we can train our farmers.”
“It has to be a marriage therefore between research and development and demonstration, where the products that are coming out of the research effort will be demonstrated for farmers and other interested persons to come and see. So going forward as long as I am here ... the focus will be on this sort of activity,” Chandler commented. (RSM)