IICA to assist Saint Lucia in rehabilitating farms

San José, Costa Rica, February 8, 2012 (IICA). After presenting senior IICA officials with a list of very specific technical cooperation needs, the Minister of Agriculture, Food Production, Fisheries, and Rural Development of Saint Lucia, Moses Jn Baptiste, saw for himself examples of agricultural innovation that his country’s farmers could replicate.

In a visit to the Headquarters of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the minister said his country urgently needed to reduce the impact of black sigatoka on its banana plantations, which also have to diversify their production.

According to Jn Baptiste, while bananas continue to be Saint Lucia’s chief export, the effects of black sigatoka have led to a drastic decline in the number of plantations in recent years. There were some 12,000 farms in 1998, but the number was down to 2000 by 2006, and fell even further in the wake of Hurricane Thomas, in November 2010.

“Our government is new. Our priority is not the medium or long term, but to obtain assistance so we can eradicate the disease that affects bananas and increases poverty by destroying our exports and complicating our rural development efforts,” the minister said.

Víctor M. Villalobos, Director General of IICA, said the Institute would respond to the requests for assistance and incorporate them into its current cooperation strategy for Saint Lucia.

“IICA knows where to find the technology that this country needs, our job is to transfer it from one nation to another, and to put all our technical experience at their disposal,” he remarked.

Innovative practices

Jn Baptiste emphasized the need for the island to develop small ruminant farming, as a way to diversify its agricultural activities and guarantee small-scale producers sufficient income.

The minister was impressed by what he saw at La Esperanza, an organic farm in Costa Rica where crops are used to feed poultry, cattle, goats and pigs, and waste to generate biogas, which supplies the property with clean energy.

“These innovations can be applied in Saint Lucia, where the farms are smaller,” said the minister, who included training in biodigester technology in the technical cooperation he requested from IICA.

The delegation from Saint Lucia also visited the University of Costa Rica’s Fabio Baudrit Moreno Agricultural Experiment Station to observe protected agriculture techniques and production in greenhouses supported by biotechnology.

At the experiment station, agronomy students study the effect that different types of soils, substrata and physical and chemical additives have on food crops, forest species, and plants used to produce biofuels.

On his tour, the minister was accompanied by Saint Lucia’s head of agricultural extension, Kemuel Jn Baptiste, and Una May Gordon, IICA’s Representative in the Eastern Caribbean States (ECS).

In Costa Rica, the mission also held a meeting with the Minister of Agriculture, Gloria Abraham, with whom they negotiated horizontal cooperation for the Caribbean island. Saint Lucia is to benefit from the Agromensajes project, under which information from agricultural markets is sent to producers’ cell phones.

Diego Montenegro, IICA Representative in Costa Rica, reported that, during a visit to the National Banana Corporation (CORBANA), it was agreed that a delegation from Saint Lucia would attend the next congress of producers, at the end of February in San Jose, to explore the possibility of technical assistance aimed at eradicating black sigatoka.

For more information, contact:
diego.montenegro@iica.int