BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, December 08, 2023 (SKNIS) – Work on the establishment of the first ever Greenhouse Village in St. Kitts and Nevis is ongoing, as the Ministry of Agriculture continues to implement innovative ways to boost crop production and ensure food security.
Through the Greenhouse Village initiative, the ministry is attempting to leverage cutting-edge technology to revolutionize traditional agricultural practices.
“The Greenhouse Village is an initiative that is going to catapult agriculture in St. Kitts and Nevis, and that is because the approach is to help to mitigate against the climate crisis that we face, not just in St. Kitts and Nevis and the region, but globally,” said Head of the Media and Communication Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Marine Resources and Cooperatives, Chaïra Flanders.
“If the weather patterns are changing [as a result of climate change]. It means that the rain that we usually get, we’re not going to get all the time or the sun might be too hot, and your peppers might just be dwindling away, and so we have found a way to ensure that our farmers use technology to help to mitigate against all of the losses that they experience using the traditional methods of farming,” Ms. Flanders added.
Meanwhile, Acting Director of Agriculture Jeanelle Kelly indicated that this project falls directly in line with the ministry’s mission to achieve CARICOM’s 25 by 2025 Agenda of significantly reducing the region’s food import bill to 25 percent by the year 2025.
The first phase will see the construction of 15 state-of-the-art greenhouses specializing in the mass production of priority crops, including peppers, tomatoes, leafy greens, broccoli and cucumbers.
“These are high-value crops. We import a very high number of them on an annual basis and so this particular initiative is geared towards [producing] these highly valued crops so that we can have them all year round in this particular condition,” Acting Director Kelly said.
On Monday, December 04, the Department of Agriculture, in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), hosted a Digital Sensor Training Workshop where extension officers and farmers were trained in the installation and use of digital sensors for greenhouses.
“These digital sensors represent new technology in the field, particularly with greenhouses, and so you could measure different things such as the ambient air, temperature, light sensitivity, the soil… which would help to monitor the crops and make you get the best value out of them,” said Ms. Kelly.
The Greenhouse Village is being erected in the Brothersons Estate region on the outskirts of Newton Ground.
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