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BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Nov 02 2015, CNS – An active campaign is underway in Barbados geared towards encouraging young people to embrace farming as a profession.
“We have a summer farm programme with the fourth and fifth formers of secondary schools to teach agriculture and we started this in 2012 with three schools,” Ena Harvey, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), told Caribbean News Service (CNS).
“Last Friday we graduated 13 schools, 38 young people in a CVQ (Caribbean Vocational Qualification) in basic agriculture and part of our programme involves internships with the private sector on farms. And some of these private sector people have actually offered some of our young people jobs.”
Ms Harvey said IICA is also working with a competency based training programme funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) here in Barbados where the IICA office is rolling out nine new CVQs in livestock rearing, agro-processing, rabbit rearing, butchery and crop production levels 1 and 2.
“So we are looking to see how we can develop that cadre of capable individuals, competent persons in agriculture. We have at the regional level and hemispheric level our flagship programme in resilience,” she explained.
“We’ve established together with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Caribbean Agricultural Research Development Institute (CARDI), Caribbean Climate Smart Agriculture Forum and we’ve had webinars right across the hemisphere.”
Ms. Harvey, who also serves as IICA’s Management Coordinator for the Caribbean Region said IICA is focusing a lot on innovation and technology, not just to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change but also to build resilience.
“So we are working from youth right up to the older farmers in introducing greenhouse technology, looking at aquaponics and looking at new methods of beekeeping,” she added.
