The Ministry of Agriculture is expressing satisfaction with the Piango festival, 2025, which took place at the Cades Bay Agricultural Station on Sunday afternoon. It was the first such festival after a two-year hiatus.
“I am happy to see the rebirth of the Piango Festival and I am generally pleased with both the turn out and the level of participation in the festival this year,” say Minister of Agriculture Anthony Smith Jnr.
Thousands turned out to participate in the festival which showcased the best the country has to offer in agro-processing. Scores of stalls were set up with vendors offering for sale from wine, to jams and sauces and a wide variety of sweets.
Minister Smith said he was pleased to welcome Prime Minister Gaston Browne to the festival which signals his support for agriculture as a matter of priority. Other Cabinet ministers included Social and Urban Minister Rawdon Turner.
The government officials and the attendees were there to patronize the stalls as well as to enjoy the entertainment provided by the organisers.
Minister Smith said part of the decided to return to Cades Bay was to shine the spotlight on the government’s efforts to revitalize the Antigua Black pineapple which is well on the way.
“Already we have propagated some 15 thousand pineapple slips with another 15 thousand slips soon to come. What we want to do is to raise the number of slips we distribute to two-hundred thousand which we hope to distribute to local farmers,” he revealed.
According to the minister the focus this year has been on agro-processing and he was quite impressed with the variety of end-products that were on display made from the two main fruits under consideration; the mango and the pineapple. “We have lots of innovative and creative ways that our people used the mangoes and the pineapples. Traditionally, we often think of planting and reaping of crops whenever we think about agriculture, but agriculture is quite a wide subject area and this includes the value-added items such as the several agro-processed items that are on sale here this afternoon,” Smith told Point Express from the Cades Bay festival.
For future iteration of the festival, the minister said he wants to see the focus expanded beyond mango and the pineapple and include other fruits that are available locally. Naturally, he believes that this will result in a demand for more booths for additional vendors thus ensuring that the festival continues to grow and to expand in years to come.
One of the attractions of the festival was the demonstration of a 10-pound drone which hopefully will soon become part of the tools of farmers as they adopt technology to apply pesticides and fertilisers to their crops.
