By Demion McTair.
Imagine what we could bequeath to our present and future agricultural entrepreneurs if we move to dedicate time, money, and land to agricultural research and development.
A lot of agricultural research has been done on St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) by the Taiwanese, Caribbean Research and Development Agency – CARDI, and other entities.
Some of the research, especially by the Taiwanese, led to successful agricultural ventures in table grape production, many varieties of flowers, pineapples, and other tropically-resistant commodities in the 1980s and onwards.
CARDI has been spearheading regional research aimed at providing data and dwarf coconut tree varieties to governments interested in revitalizing their coconut oil and other coconut-related industries. They have been doing research on a number of other areas as well.
As climate change impacts such as warmer temperatures, drought and desertification, and unpredictable weather continue, continuous research and monitoring are needed to inform policymakers and entrepreneurs about important findings in the agricultural sector. This research effort can be consolidated into one state agency whose primary mandate is to push data-driven agricultural entrepreneurship in SVG.
Now, let it be clear that this writer is not trained in agriculture. This writer is trained in marketing communication and development – an area needed to drive development rhetoric, ideas, and policies in any country.
This writer, like many others, sees the potential for our young agricultural entrepreneurs to benefit from expansions in tourism, filling food security gaps, having better access to agricultural land, and better access to agricultural research to inform their decisions.
So, the idea is for SVG to establish a multi-agency effort to establish and manage an institute that promotes research and development, land management, food security and agricultural entrepreneurship.
Central to this effort will be the allocation of 50 acres of land dedicated to research that tests the reliability of existing studies about crops that can grow in our tropical region, through the monitored growth of certain crops.
The proposed Institute
The multifaceted autonomous state agency can comprise the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Community College (SVGCC) in partnership with the University of the West Indies. The SVGCC could have a strengthened agricultural department to help conduct agricultural and climate change research and document and publish findings. Its agriculture and entrepreneurship students will have supervised access to this portion of land to test their skills while having the opportunity to generate income for the Institute and for themselves.
Other players can be the Ministry of Agriculture which will be able to provide policy guidance and technocratic support; the Bureau of Standards which will help with quality assurance; the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning, and Information Technology which will be able to provide guidance on the values of imports and exports, through the statistical department and setting up a database.
The Ministries responsible for lands and trade and commerce will also be useful as well as the Chamber of Industry and Commerce and farmers groups.
The Institute should have a laboratory, trained agriculturalists, chemists, and other scientists, data collection personnel, linguists and communications personnel, a librarian to assist with publications, and an economist.
Features of the Institute
The lands will feature greenhouses in some parts, hydroponics, aquaponics, and traditional agricultural land preparation.
There should also be a poultry section to test feeds, vitamins, and other inputs on layer and broiler birds.
What will the Institute do?
The Institute will, among other things:
Set agricultural production targets for at least ten (10) commodities each year, conduct data collection and continuous agricultural and climate change research, create and update a database of agricultural lands, promote food security, and enable agricultural entrepreneurship and innovation.
Proposed locations due to available state-owned acreages: Georgetown or Montreal.
Set targets
Based on data provided each year by the ministries of Trade, Finance, and Agriculture, the Institute should announce, publicly, targets for the expected production of selected agricultural commodities each year.
So, for instance, the Institute can say: that SVG aims to produce 500,000 lbs of poultry in 2025 which would be valued at $2.5 million dollars. Targets should be set for at least 10 major commodities and should also include non-traditional crops that help with agricultural diversification (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, etc).
Conduct data collection and research
The institute should collect and store a database of all active farmers for the targeted commodities, their locations, their needs, their standards, and their quality compliance. The Institute should also conduct research on products and best practices available to these farmers.
Proper research should be done as inform where are the right places to establish certain agricultural undertaking.
For instance, what should be grown in cooler versus warmer environments? Where are best suited for poultry or pig farms?
Where is best to grow certain flowers?
A huge part of the research agenda will be to validate existing research in the St. Vincent context. So, for instance, if the FAO says a particular variety of cabbage can be grown in tropical environments, this institute should test that by trying to grow the said variety with the stipulated conditions in SVG to validate the available research.
Promoting Food Security
The Institute can work with the Zero Hunger Trust Fund to gather data or provide data on land availability and suitability for establishing agricultural enterprises that can help people alleviate poverty.
Enabling Agricultural Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Institute, through its research, should inform the government about new technologies in agriculture and provide results of the testing of these technologies so that farmers can receive training and support to use these technologies to enhance productivity in their respective farms.
Research areas should also surround diversification and inform how new agricultural entrepreneurship ventures can be created or encouraged to fill gaps or solve problems.
For instance, one trained agriculturalist told this writer that some hotels may prefer pasteurized eggs and separated eggs for safety reasons. If there is an institute to look at how the agricultural sector could be diversified to better help the tourism sector, game changing ideas can come to life. Entities like the Centre for Enterprise Development would be good partners for this Institute to promote food security and agricultural entrepreneurship.
Additionally, kitchen waste generated by hotels, schools, restaurants, and other businesses may be useful in making certain types of fuel such as CNG or even cooking gas.
Research on cutting food wastage or how food trash could be tuned into transportable efficient energy can be looked into by this institute, and it will have the land space to test all of these things.
Conclusion
Strengthening efforts to achieve food security must be backed by research. Achieving food security is essential to reducing poverty by enabling the growth of agricultural entrepreneurship.
Efforts to achieve food security may be stymied by the lack of structured access to agricultural lands or the absence of land management policies and databases, and research.
In the face of climate change impacts and threats to achieving food security, more robust research is needed and research should be continuous. Its findings should be properly documented and made available to all players in the industry. The proposed Institute will help to drive the local research and influence policies needed to push food security.
What are your thoughts?