BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – AS the world is become more technologically inclined, farmers on St. Kitts are not being left behind as the Ministry of Agriculture recently launched a new initiative geared towards promoting them.
The new initiative is an online portal that makes purchasing fruits, vegetables and other produce as easy as the click of a mouse at agrofresh.kn.
Launched on Sunday (Jul. 17) during the staging of the Restaurant Week’s Tasting event at the St. Kitts Marriott Resort, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Allister Edwards explained to SKNVibes the purpose of the new venture.
“It is a portal where we can put up a virtual market place. Market place, as you may understand, is going to benefit the people who are buying and selling. And of course we would want some of those people to be the farmers.”
PS Edwards however stressed that farmers must be registered and pay their rental and lease fees on a regular basis in order to be entitled to be on the website as vendors.
He noted that it would be an expensive venture for any individual to own their own website, but this new initiative would allow the farmers to have access to their own section to upload their information.
“So if there is a new crop upcoming, they can upload that information - what they have, the price that they are selling them for – and they can even have a little note to say how you can get it from them.”
Edwards underscored the fact that once that initiative does not work for the buyers, they can always return to the home page at the Department of Agriculture. That agency, he explained, would then play the coordinating role if there is any difficulty in obtaining large quantities and the logistics of them.
The Department and the Ministry of Agriculture have over the years implemented a number of initiatives geared towards increasing and pushing their produce to more markets.
However, many farmers did not utilized those initiatives to their fullest potential, and many have fizzled away.
“Of course we would want the buyers – the service sector, the restaurants and anybody in the food industry – to benefit from this. It is not just limited to fresh produce, but agro-processed items as well…and our fishers.”
According to Edwards, they had implemented the online initiative some years ago. But following recent discussions with those in the hospitality sector, it was revealed that they did not know what the Department of Agriculture had, what it did not have on the market and how to get the produce.
Therefore, as a result, the hoteliers’ best option was to import produce, Edwards explained.
“So our drive is to push local produce and production, firstly. We had a fact sheet which we circulated on a monthly basis that gave a forecast of produce for about four weeks, and the back of it would indicate to the persons buying the farmer’s name and number so they can make contact with them,” Edwards said.
He reiterated that one of the main objectives of this initiative is to increase local produce and consumption.
