Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 15, 2020 (ZIZ News):
Chaïra Flanders
More than 150 livestock farmers on Nevis are the recipients of a $33,000 donation of feed thanks to a joint initiative between the Nevis Island Administration (NIA) and the East Caribbean Group of Companies (ECGC).
During a brief handing over ceremony on Wednesday morning, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture on Nevis, Mr. Huey Sergeant explained the importance of assisting farmers during this global pandemic
“Our livestock sector is quite important to us especially in these times when we have COVID-19 and security of each country around the world is extremely important we want to ensure that we support our Farmers and in this case or livestock Farmers in ensuring that we have continuous production on a local scale”, he said.
Director of Agriculture, Randy Elliot said that the farmers were able to collect over 800 bags of feed and pledged the Department’s continued support to the livestock farmers.
“We would have dialogue, we would have reached out to the Ministry of Trade and also to ECGC to ensure that we are able to have something here this morning for our farmers. Behind us is a number of time for livestock farmers over 825 bags of feed and we are here pleased to state that 154 farmers going to benefit from this feed and this is just to show the continuous support and the confidence that the department and ministry of Agriculture have in our farming sector”, Mr. Elliot expressed.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Trade, Collin Dore explained how the initiative came about and said the Department is more than happy to assist the farmers. He also used the opportunity to thank ECGC for being able to produce the feed in less than 4 weeks of the initial request.
“We are aware that COVID-19 brought a whole change and disruption in the way things were done. Farmers we are aware, we heard your cry. We are aware that you went through a period where you had to continue to maintain your animals but with the closure of the hotels and the shrinking market, of course your income level fell down. So we went out of our way to try to find a way to help you to meet some of the costs during this period so we reached out to ECGC. ECGC is a company in St. Vincent that supply the feed for the supply office and we begged them and beseeched them on behalf of the Department and Ministry of Agriculture to come to our assistance to send us some feed which we can distribute to the farmers which can reduce your cost of production during this time. We are indeed happy that they responded quickly”
Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Alexis Jeffers, shared similar sentiments and thanked the the East Caribbean Group of Companies (ECGC) for their ongoing partnership.
Deputy Director of Agriculture on Nevis, Floyd Liburd was also in attendance at the ceremony where farmers were seen adhering to the social and physical distancing protocols and wearing their protective masks.
Both livestock and poultry farmers were able to benefit from the $33,000 worth of feed contribution.