Quantcast
Channel: Barbados Advocate - News
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 8538

Farmers ready to help

$
0
0
Article Image Alt Text

Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS), James Paul.

With the Government set to distribute 60 000 care packages of basic food and essential items to help the most vulnerable during the pending two-week lockdown, the assurance is being given that stakeholders in the local agriculture sector are willing and ready to play their part.

It has come from Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS), James Paul.

Reflecting on the care packages initiative in an interview with The Barbados Advocate, Paul said with the lockdown looming, farmers are eager to help. He made the point while indicating that he hopes that between that initiative and supplying supermarkets with various types of produce, farmers will be able to sell whatever they have available to meet the needs of the Barbadians.

“We have been told that we would be able to provide some commodities for those care packages, and we are right now putting systems in place to see what is available among the various farms. This is not something we prepared for in the farming community so it really depends on availability, but we will do our best. So we are going to do our surveys now and then see how we can proceed from there,” he said.

The BAS official added that at this time the conditions for growing produce are very good, and this is heartening given that at the end of last year conditions were “pretty bad”.

As to how the national lockdown will impact the operations of the various farms across the island, Paul said farmers are assuming that they can operate outside of the curfew hours as they normally would, once they hold firm to the COVID-19 protocols.

“The farmers will do what they have to do, but there are certain services that are essential to keeping a farmer’s operations going. And really, the truth is, the important thing for us is to ensure those services will be available so that our operations can run smoothly,” he stated.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 8538

Trending Articles



<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>