Agricultural issues tabled at CARDI meeting
It is renowned as a regional organisation geared at improving competition while maintaining international quality standards in the Caribbean’s agricultural sector. And this week, representatives of CARDI, the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute, is hosting its fifty-eighth meeting of the Board of Directors in Belize City. According to CARDI officials, while a lack of finances, due to non-payment of arrears by specific member states, have negatively impacted their role in the region, the institute has conducted ground-breaking research in areas such as Montserratt where scientists are currently investigating whether the volcanic ash that continues to inundate the island can be combined with native soils to create arable lands. This afternoon, Chairman of CARDI’s Board, Keith Archibald, told News Five that, as his own countrymen in St. Kitts and Nevis have discovered, with vanishing preferential European markets for traditional products, the lesson being taught in the region is diversification.
Keith Archibald, Chair, CARDI Board of Directors
“We have to. The O.E.C.S. banana producing countries have now had to consider diversification and to consider alternative commodities and so will some of the other sugar producing countries. So there is a lot going on in the region in terms of change.
“CARDI has already been able to make a contribution there because CARDI has just completed a strategic marketing study for agriculture in St. Kitts and Nevis that will help it to focus on other commodities, particularly vegetables and fruits, and on some livestock development…and in relation to vegetables and fruits, not only to satisfy the domestic market with its increasing tourism sector, but also to consider export possibilities.”
Another area of research currently being conducted by CARDI is in regard to GMO’s or Genetically Modified Organisms or materials for both human and animal consumption. Today, Executive Director of CARDI, Windell Parham, explained why Belize needs to monitor scientific developments in this area.
Windell Parham, Executive Director, CARDI
“We know that GMO’s utilised in commercial production of corn, soybean and other products that makes our production less competitive. So there is a need to say, if we want to compete, do we enter this arena or do we stay on the other side where people are talking about organic produce that are preferred because they believed there are less health risks if you consume organic products. But there is the real world where competition occurs and if you are faced with all these new developments in technology and science, then we need to try to learn to appreciate it and to move with the times if I may say so. So basically what we’re doing, we’re revising all our strategies and to see how CARDI can strengthen and reconfigure itself to deliver the mandates that we have to deliver in the region.”
On Friday, the Members of the Board will go on a field trip to Spanish Lookout in the Cayo District to explore the community’s atmosphere of cooperation as a model for agricultural success.
