Philipsburg:---The Theme for 2009 is “Achieving food security in times of crisis”.
Every country should strive in one way or the other to encourage agriculture so that in times of crisis we would be able to feed ourselves.
Many years ago the government of St.Maarten was very much involve in Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries. We had an agricultural station where much was done under the leadership of an Agricultural expert.
During the last 30 -40 years there has been little or no government involvement in the Agriculture sector.
However over the years some people did continue involving themselves in agriculture, but this was not in any organize manner and without help of government.
In view of the aforementioned I have decided to tackle the sector Agriculture head on and various plans are now being prepared to be executed very soon.
St.Maarten has the opportunity to become the trend setter in Agricultural Enovation in the Caribbean.
We have a unique situation where we have over 1.2 Million tourist visiting each year and along with or local population they all have to eat. At the moment we import everything that they consumes.
In our approach to food security we have to bear in mind the limited available agricultural land. So in order for us to achieve any level of food security, we will have to employ all of the feasible innovation in agriculture available to us.
This approach is going to be applied to the sector Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries.
Such approach will include Hydroponics, Aqua-ponics, Aqua-culture and the Verty-Grow system.
Animal Husbandry will also be taken to a new level, where quality breeding stock will be made available to animal keepers to up grade there local stock.
In order to achieve these goals we have started to revitalize the Agricultural Foundation, which has been dormant for some years, they will be responsible for the set up and good functioning of the Agricultural Station.
This Agricultural Station will be manned by our own local professional agriculturist.
Several areas are being looked at for this purpose.
In order to make this program a success I am counting on all interested persons to get involve by contacting our local Agriculturalist Mr. Joslyn Richardson at 580-5157 or the commissioners office at 542-4672
In Commemoration of World Food Day we encourage the population to
Focus on healthy eating habits.