Agriculture Minister, Anthony Smith Jnr. says the government has launched several initiatives that will make the sector more attractive to private sector investments as well as for young people.
Speaking with J-Truth The Engineer on his podcast on Tuesday night, Minister Smith again pointed to an area of concern for both he and the government; the generational gap that currently exists in agriculture.
“The average age of farmers in Antigua and Barbuda is over fifty years and as a country and a government we have to develop programmes to address this issue urgently,” he stated.
Among the initiatives, he outlined is putting in place much of the infrastructure that the sector needs such as available water, roads and the provision of equipment to assist with preparing the land for production.
“Through the Ministry of Agriculture, we have been working on developing our water catchments as this is very important and is one of the issues that the sector faces. With the assistance of some specialists, the ministry has identified some water ways which have since been earmarked for dam development,” he revealed.
Already, one such development is a dam being developed at the Cassada Gardens Race track to serve farmers in the surrounding areas. “We are also working on developing some mega-dams in the Liberta area to take care of farms in those areas,” he stated.
Another area of concern is feeder roads for farmers so that they can easily access their farms. “Farmers must be able to access their farms and currently we have a number of bad roads leading to where there are farms. The Cabinet has assigned a quarry to the Ministry of Agriculture to provide the materials necessary for the development of feeder roads leading to farm areas,” he disclosed.
Minister Smith explained that the overall aim is to attract private sector investments into agriculture by these moves.
Additionally, he announced major developments for the Central Marketing Corporation (CMC) which will be more active in marketing the produce from the nation’s farming community. Included in the plans is a new headquarters building for CMC that is in the cards.
Coupled with these is the renovation of the current abattoir at North Sound and the construction of additional ones to process the meats produced by animal farmers, the minister further disclosed.
