This news article is a production distributed through Caribbean News Service. It is made freely available to your media and we encourage publishing and redistribution, giving credit to Caribbean News Service (CNS).
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Nov 02 2015, CNS – Caribbean countries are among the most vulnerable to climate change because of their dependence on rain-fed agriculture, high levels of poverty, low levels of human and physical capital, and poor infrastructure. They also have a limited capacity to adapt to climate change.
But in the face of a clear and growing threat to food security brought about by this phenomenon, small farmers in the Caribbean are fighting back.
“Farmers are finding innovative ways of beating climate change, for example minimum tillage. You find farmers are using in some crops, a hole systems instead of bank systems. They are finding ways,” Jethro Greene, Chief Coordinator, Caribbean Farmers Network (CaFAN) told Caribbean News Service (CNS).
“As humans evolve, no matter how bad the situation is, working on the ground you take a more practical view than an academic theoretical view of climate change.
While its gloom and doom from a theoretical perspective, for us it might very well be open channels of opportunities,” he added.
Greene spoke with CNS on the sidelines of the Caribbean–Pacific Agri-Food Forum which opens here Monday. The forum will be implemented over five days and brings together more than 250 leaders, decision-makers and agri-food actors to engage in collective actions that can contribute to the transformative efforts of agriculture and the rural milieu.
The ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), in collaboration with the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS) and several other partners are hosting the forum.
Greene said CaFAN is working with CTA to produce a position paper for small farmers.
“We are trying to get people’s attention drawn to the fact that small farmers are more vulnerable than most and that some of our practices like crop rotation and intercropping are more favourable in terms of environmental practice. So therefore, attention must be given to help us cement and improve these practices and build on these practices,” Greene said.
