Minister of Agriculture, Food and Nutritional Security, Indar Weir, has endorsed the “Grow Green Barbados” project, a series of DIY gardening and cooking videos, which was launched at the United Nations House in Hastings, Christ Church, yesterday.
Stating that the initiative, which encourages Barbadians to cultivate their own food and to prepare it with a garden to table mindset, while promoting community engagement and agricultural sustainability, Mr. Weir noted that it was started five years ago, as a response to the need for food self-sufficiency.
“This project started when I became Minister of Agriculture in 2018. We didn’t know at the time that first of all, we would have a COVID-19 pandemic, but the Prime Minister of Barbados thought that it would have been important for all Barbadians to know how to grow their own food,” he said.
Minister Weir expressed gratitude to the key stakeholders for the role they played in facilitating the project. “I must start by thanking Dr. [David] Bynoe and the team at the Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Development Programme for providing the assistance in getting this going….
“I must also thank BGIS as well, for facilitating the project. And I do recall that they had put up a series of videos during the COVID-19 pandemic, which also spoke to what we were speaking of,” the Agriculture Minister stated.
Mr. Weir also spoke of how available land in the country is being competed for by various interests, including housing, the tourism industry, and commercial activities, and underscored the global significance of food security, noting that “the number one item on the agenda is…food security”, and it is driven by climate-related challenges and recent global disruptions in trade.
He addressed the need for climate funding in agriculture, pointing out that only a fraction of climate spending is allocated to the land use sector, while highlighting the funding gap in climate adaptation and the importance of directing resources effectively.
Mr. Weir said that there needs to be a focus on resilience in agriculture systems, particularly emphasising the need to adapt to climate change. “Latin America and the Caribbean region are trending somewhere around less than one per cent in growth in the sector,” he stated, highlighting the urgency of addressing these challenges.
In his closing remarks, he urged Barbadians to actively participate in the “Grow Green Barbados” project and engage in community agriculture to secure their food supply.
“Let us commit to making sure we can grow our own food. This project, being launched on World Food Day, ‘Water is life; water is food; leave no one behind,’ is indeed very appropriate for these times,” Minister Weir said.