Plans Progressing Smoothly for Agriculture Open Day

(ZIZ)– The Department of Agriculture is finalizing plans for the 2014 Agriculture Open Day event.

This year’s open day will be held under the theme, “Agriculture: moving in the right direction.”

Chairman of the Agriculture Open Day Committee, Ian Chapman, says one of the initiatives that is helping to move agriculture forward is the installation of Water Catchment Dams.

“We have built some catchment dams in various locations around the island where we see farming communities are heavy so it can feed maybe three (or) four farmers — five, six or a certain number, depending on the size of the catchment and when the water resources are scarce, meaning the rain, then the farmers can tap into these,” Chapman said.

He noted that the introduction of greenhouse technology around the island has also helped to move the sector forward.

“We have now in the last two years put down 24 greenhouses around the island in farming communities. As we know, the monkeys tremendously do damage some of the crops that the farmers have, so we have now embedded this into what we call our protected agriculture,” he noted.

According to Chapman, a number of agriculture advancements will be on display at the Agriculture Open Day which is scheduled for April 24th and 25th at the Department of Agriculture grounds.