ST. GEORGE’S, GRENADA– The Ministry of Agriculture has collaborated with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in offering farmers, input suppliers, and extension assistants, theoretical training on protected cultivation systems.
A train-the trainers’ workshop, held on June 9, was aimed at offering pertinent information that allows farmers who invest in protected cultivation a hand up to mitigating the negative impacts of climate change.
The workshop facilitated by FAO’s Agricultural Officer, Melvin Medina Navarro, encouraged cultivation in greenhouse systems and focused on seedling production, irrigation, nutrition, and pest and disease management. This training followed a field activity where protective agriculture plots were visited for assessments.
Senior Agricultural Officer, Lauren St. Louis, explained that protected cultivation systems are paramount to Grenada’s food security and helps address food challenges sustainably and resiliently.
“Protected cultivation – growing greenhouses, shade houses, tunnels, aquaponic and hydroponic systems – provides the means to provide larger quantities of food of higher quality in areas where this may not have been previously possible, on smaller tracks of land and with less chemical interventions. This type of cultivation allows us to achieve optimal plant growth and increase crop yields and quality. It also allows us to grow and have crops available during periods when this would not have been seasonally possible. Since the growing medium can be modified using these systems, they also allow us to produce in areas that would have been considered unfavourable,” St. Louis said.
The workshop facilitator enlightened the participants on the changes needed to have greater efficiencies in protected crop cultivation.
He said, “we are in a tropical country where high temperatures are mostly year-round affecting crop production. That is the main challenge we should try to solve here because protected cultivation systems will increase the temperature further. But we are trying to find different technical solutions to decrease the temperatures and grow crops year-round, especially those growing well under medium temperatures.”
National Consultant for the project, Ronald O’Neale, expressed confidence that the information shared will effectively assist farmers with field management practices.
Agronomist, Kerry Ann Frank and Farmer, Derrick Penny, spoke of the value of what they gathered at the session.
“The most important thing is to adapt structures to our conditions,” Frank stated, “we are a tropical country, so it is very hot, so we need to make sure that we adapt it to reduce the temperature on the inside to give us more effective production.”
Aquaponics farmer, Derrick Penny, welcomed all the timely information, particularly the element of pruning and stages in which one should prune certain crops.
Ministry of Agriculture… ensuring food and nutrition security for all.
