Agriculture authorities on Nevis seeking to reduce cost of local food

NIA CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (February 11, 2022) — Mr. Huey Sargeant, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture on Nevis, acknowledged that the ministry, through its Department of Agriculture, is seeking to reduce the cost of locally grown food.

During a recent wide-ranging interview with the Department of Information, Mr. Sargeant noted that the move is one of their main goals but they have been encountering challenges particularly from farmers. However, he stated that it was not geared towards competing with the island’s farmers.

 “One of the main goals, and we’ve had some challenges to this particularly from farmers, is to be able to lower the cost of food on the island.

“When we do our accountability studies and so on, we are realising that the price of food is somewhat artificially high, and when we do our accounting, it suggests that the cost of production is a lot lower, and that the price can actually come down to such a level that we can effectively compete with the imported food that we have on island…It is not a short-term goal; it is actually a long-term goal.

“A lot of what we are doing in agriculture is to ensure that consumers can be able to eat healthy, consume healthy and not pay exorbitant prices for it, and that is one of the overarching strategies that we are having,” he said.

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