(MOA Basseterre, St. Kitts, November 3 2023);
Technical staff within the Department of Agriculture St. Kitts, participated in an in-person validation workshop hosted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), held in collaboration with the Ministry of Sustainable Development, in an effort to validate crops and cropping systems that are commercially viable and suitable for adopting Sustainable Land Management (SLM) practices in St. Kitts and Nevis.
The workshop, which took place on Wednesday, 01 November 2023 in the Large Conference Room at the Department of Agriculture is critical in the promotion of sustainable land practises under the umbrella of the Improving Environmental Management through Sustainable Land Management project in St. Kitts and Nevis, which is funded by the Global Environment Facility
(GEF) in support to the
Government’s efforts to promote sustainable economic development.
Participants from the Marketing, Extension Services (Crop and Livestock), and Agro-processing divisions engaged in meaningful discussion about sustainable land management practices that can be adopted by farmers. The group also saw interactive presentations that highlighted topics such as Market Suitability Analysis, Selected Crops and the Validation of Selected Crops.
The crop selection process is expected to provide support to selected farms as a part of its overall objective to restore five-hundred (500) hectares of degraded land inclusive of two-hundred and fifteen (215) hectares of degraded farmland.
Nikkita Browne, Project Coordinator for the Improving Environmental Management through Sustainable Land Management in St. Kitts and Nevis Project as well as Dr. Felipe Peguero, Professor and Specialist in ag-economic and climate finance at the Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) based in Costa Rica, facilitated the workshop.
