In her continuing efforts to push for food nutrition and security in this Covid-19 era, Minister of Agriculture of Agriculture, Hon. Samantha Marshall is lauding an initiative designed to strengthen backyard gardeners and householders to support this important process.
On Thursday (yesterday), she met with the key partners of a joint project between the FarmersForum group, the Ministry of Agriculture, CARDI, the Red Cross and the Audains` on their farm, where thousands of seedlings were produced for two seedling distribution exercises to be held early next week.
The Red Cross services were engaged in this project to assist with the logistics in distribution, record keeping and to ensure that there is a transparent approach to this initiative.
“There is adequate record keeping as to what we have acquired, what we would be distributing and records and everything would be prepared,”Chairman of the Farmers Forum, Mr. Marvin Joseph stated.
He is urging members of the public to take advantage of an opportunity that is meant to help households to prepare at least a week’s worth of food.
Distribution would be done at six different locations namely – Jennings Primary, Villa Primary, Ottos Comprehensive, Clare Hall Secondary, Irene B. Williams and Barbuda. Joseph is urging persons to pre-register so that when distribution starts, they would spend little or no time at the distribution sites. He said that registering on the days of distribution should be a last resort.
On the first day at each location, distribution of seedlings will cover surnames with the letter starting A – I and on the second day, J-Z.
The Farmers Forum President said that five different crops will be available to be distributed to 7,000 households.
He urged members of the public to get on board and get registered in order to benefit from this programme.
According to Joseph, a WhatsApp message can be sent to 781-5296 or 721-6650. Once a message is sent to either of these numbers, persons would automatically receive a message with the registration links which you can click on and complete the registration process and submit it.
The distribution would take place on 20th and 21st April from 7.30am-11.30am sharp before the 12 noon curfew.
Joseph said that almost 3,000 persons are registered so far and registration is ongoing. Each person would get 10 seedlings which will include string bean, pumpkin, okra, cassava and sweet potato. Each person would get two of each seedling.
Minister Marshall said that the farmers forum which is a conglomerate of a number of the farmers` associations, must be commended for coming up with the idea of how they canfurther collaborate with the ministry to deal with the covid-19 response to food security and nutrition in Antigua and Barbuda.
“And so as part of that, they said look, we have to get seedlings going.”
Minster Marshall paid gratitude to Mr. and Mrs.Audain along with Mr. Joseph and team for taking the initiative and ran with it.
Mrs. Tricia Audain has been laboring on their farm to ensure that the seedlings are ready for distribution and she also used the opportunity to thank the Red Cross for assisting with the process. Minister Marshall said that their interest in seeing this project to fruition must be commended
“And they made sure they made the preparations using a lot of their materials along with some of the materials which we were able to assist with through CARDI and so what they are doing now is to ensure that there is enough seedlings for distribution which they will be responsible for in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture.”
More highlights from other key ministryofficials and stakeholders who were on the Audain’s farm during this meeting with the minister, will follow.
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