Agriculture C.E.O. Says Help Coming for Carrot Farmers

But in order to compete with the imported carrots from the region, which are being sold at lower prices, farmers from the New River Farmers Cooperative wants help from government. Soil quality, a climate-resilient variety of the carrot, among other things will take significant investment. Today, we asked Agriculture C.E.O. Servulo Baeza about what government can do. He says that help is coming.

Servulo Baeza

Servulo Baeza, C.E.O., Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security & Enterprise

“So the challenge to them is let’s try to produce more even if it out-of-season. So with that, it comes with different challenges. They would tell you they should be getting about fourteen thousand pounds per acre. Because it is out-of-season, they are averaging about seven thousand pounds per acre. They may have a lot to reject and so they are not making as much money as they would if it is during the particular season or the season itself. So those are the things that we have to look at. The farmers also mentioned about research that we need to try to find the varieties because there are new varieties coming on, being tested and being put out in the market that can last longer and tolerate more heat. That kinda research is the challenge that we would have at Central Farm where we would have to try some of these varieties to see how they would produce or how they grow out-of-season so that we can then transfer that knowledge to the farmers for them to do that. The climate. Well our tropical climate is a challenge for everything for us. You are talking about the temperature, the heat; you are talking about the rain, pests – our environment is very challenging to grow anything. While we can, it is very challenging. But the Ministry of Agriculture is promoting climate smart agriculture; we are promoting covered structures and so these are areas that we are going. Right now we have a project where we will be distributing thirty covered structures throughout the country, a CDF project that we are undertaking right now. This should start off hopefully ending of November, December, these cover structures will go up.”