ONGOING TRAINING GEARED TOWARDS SENSITIZING LOCAL CROP PRODUCERS TO THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE  

Basseterre, St. Kitts, September 22, 2022 (SKNIS): The Ministry of Agriculture continues its work to improve various aspects of crop production in an effort to better position the Federation with respect to food security. On September 21, 2022, six persons took part in the ‘Train the Trainer’ workshop to sensitize extension officers on the importance of accurate data collection, types of data to collect, data archiving and the relevance of the data collection to the inventory and to the country.

“This is a groundbreaking workshop for agriculture. We are focusing on Greenhouse gases in agriculture, just realizing that you have been chosen because you all are really the movers and shakers in the agriculture sector. And we really want to embrace you and to have you onboard at the very beginning and also to have your feedback as we navigate through this new era of making agriculture in St. Kitts and Nevis more heard of in terms of climate change and recording greenhouse gases. I am sure that you all have heard about animal production and greenhouse gases and the sector producing more than one third of the world’s greenhouse gases. So, with that in mind, we are also looking at the field production and greenhouse in terms of nitrogen,” said IICA Technical Specialist Sharon Jones.

The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) is currently implementing its CARICOM AgREADY project funded by the Green Climate Fund. IICA has partnered with The Greenhouse Gas Management Institute and The Caribbean Cooperative MRV Hub to facilitate the ongoing training sessions. 

“In terms of climate change, we want to change that narrative. And in changing that narrative IICA with the support of nine (9) countries in the Caribbean, including St. Kitts and Nevis, we went to the Green Climate Fund to get funding for this project. The goal is to have agriculture more responsive to the changes in climate change. So, on that behalf, we have four of our officers in St. Kitts and Nevis who were trained in a ‘Train the Trainers’ workshop in terms of having farmers trained, and who are now galvanizing that initiative so that with time agriculture can now speak on its own,” said Ms. Jones.

St. Kitts and Nevis is a negative greenhouse gas contributor but crop farming leads to the release of greenhouse gases through the application of fertilizers and lime, crop residue burning, tillage and other management practices, saturated soils (such as rice paddies) and the conversion of forest land to cropland.

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