Basseterre, St. Kitts, November 24th , 2020 (ZIZ News)
By: Chaïra Flanders
ZIZ met with newly awarded Crop Farmer of the Year who says farming should be a priority to our people during this time.
That is the message from Crop Farmer of the year, Leon Anthony, affectionately known as “Yellow” of Stapleton, St. Peters. He was at the time speaking with ZIZ before giving the production crew an inside look of what it takes to be named Crop Farmer of the Year.
In an exclusive interview at his Green Thumb Farm on Monday, Yellow said farming is his passion and should be taken seriously across the federation. He also spoke of how hard he has been working to maintain a productive and successful farming business over the years.
“Over the years, over the past 5 years, I have been very competitive so as getting Farmer of the year, I know it is through hard work because of output and you have to just keep on working because that is the way we have to go. We as farmers have to make food security our number one priority but we still have to take it on a higher level which is business so that we can be more consistent and more productive. We as farmers need good house, send your children to college and make sure everything is alright so we got to keep on working hard, smart”, he said.
He also explained how the government’s stimulus helped to boost production on his farm.
“The stimulus package was free land preparation, free seeds, free seedlings, free insecticide, free herbicide. I was able to harvest thousands of pounds of sweet peppers, thousands of pounds of pumpkin, thousands of pounds of watermelon. I was able to sell cheaper and make more money because of less spoilage so everything worked right down to the consumer, which was very, very good”, the farmer explained.
He said he believes that farming should be made more attractive to the nation’s youth like any other profession.
“We as farmers have to set here as role models so we can make agriculture more attractive to the younger ones them because right now we are seeing they are not so interested and in the long run our country [is going to have] a shortage of farmers so it will be lack of proper nutrition so we have to keep them going onboard”, Anthony noted.
He also used the opportunity to address how important it is for our people to focus on the agricultural sector especially during challenging times caused by global pandemics.
Yellow said he believes agriculture should be our main priority because no country can function without food.
He encouraged everyone to find ways to start farming even if that means producing from the backyard and then promoted the eating and buying of local foods.
]]>Basseterre, St. Kitts, August 19, 2020 (ZIZ News) : The push to ensure food security in the federation by the Department of Agriculture is already seeing positive results with farmers reaping a massive harvest of local vegetables.
Shanique Harvey has the details….
The ramping up of food production came from the possibility of food shortage due to lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Department of Agriculture and the government of St. Kitts and Nevis sought to get ahead of this by implementing a stimulus package in the sum of $10 million to aid in increasing food production.
Director of Agriculture, Melvin James said that about 270 farmers were interested in increasing their production.
He added that there were a number of criteria in place for the farmers who were a part of the program which assisted with the success of the harvest.
“We said we’ll work first with persons who have irrigation, we would also work with persons whose lands were just about ready so that we could quickly get the things into the ground and we would work with people first of all who had some experience with the crop and I believe that our criteria was well founded because we got some excellent results,” he said.
The agriculture director revealed that 2 acres of land were cultivated for squash, 3 and half acres for sweet peppers, 12 acres for sweet potatoes and 1 and a half acres for watermelon.
He provided the number of each crop harvested.
“With the 2 acres of squash we have over 18 thousand pounds of squash on the ground right now. Just two days ago a farmer from Cayon brought in 3 thousand pounds of his own production with over another 3 thousand pounds in the field. The water melons we had some 2 thousand pounds stored here from a Famer in Newton Ground, I’m happy to report the watermelons are moving fast and so what we have left today is just a few bags compared to what we started with a week ago and the other thing is the sweet peppers, we have an order from one of the supermarkets for some 5 hundred pounds this week and I’m very happy that we can deliver 5 hundred pounds of sweet pepper to a local supermarket.”
One recipient of the stimulus package was Leon Anthony, a farmer of 5 acres of land in St. Peter’s. He shared the benefits of being a part of the program.
“Receiving the stimulus package was a really good start off for me because during the weather things were so rough and the government had provided the stimulus package to us farmers in which was a very good move to me. I got at least over 3 thousand seedlings of sweet peppers in which I already harvested over 8 hundred pounds so I believe the program is going very good for me so far.”
The Department of Agriculture used the package to assist the farmers with various inputs and services such as land preparation, chemicals, seeds and seedlings, fertilizers, extension services storage and sales.
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