{"id":6345,"date":"2023-05-22T19:55:01","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T19:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/?p=6345"},"modified":"2023-05-24T13:00:23","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T13:00:23","slug":"ecs-representative-visits-antigua-and-barbuda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/2023\/05\/22\/ecs-representative-visits-antigua-and-barbuda\/","title":{"rendered":"ECS Representative visits Antigua and Barbuda"},"content":{"rendered":"
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St. John\u2019s, 22nd, May 2023, The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) ECS Representative Mr. Gregg Rawlins visited Antigua and Barbuda, an annual activity which is implemented by the institute. The purpose of his visit was to get an understanding of the collaborative work being undertaken by IICA in the country and identify the priority areas for the strengthening and transformation of the agriculture and rural development sector, as well as identify potential areas for joint work, aligned with the IICA Medium Term Plan 2022-2026.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Mr. Rawlins visited several public and private stakeholders which included the newly appointed Minister of Agriculture Fisheries and Barbuda Affairs Hon. EP Chet Green. Mr. Rawlins during his discussion with the Minister of Agriculture focus was put on the importance of exchanging experiences on the design and implementation of digital solutions to drive collective action and catalyze investments for the transformation of food systems, emphasizing the importance of Regional Cooperation and best practices from the Caribbean and the Americas.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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They also agreed that the Ministers of Agriculture should exercise their collective leadership to accelerate the transformation of food systems and to make the voice of agriculture heard in the most important CARICOM and OECS discussion forums on the future of modes of production. One of them is the upcoming Meeting with the Ministers of Agriculture, which will take place in the IICA Headquarters in Costa Rica in July of this year.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A joint meeting was also undertaken with the Representative and the newly appointed Permanent Secretary of Agriculture Ms. Sandra Joseph together with the Director of Agriculture Mr. Gregory Bailey whose discussion was mainly surrounding water and what are the innovative technologies which would be used to harness the country\u2019s water challenges.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The ECS Representative made his first courtesy visit to the sister Isle Barbuda where he met with the new Chairman of the Barbuda Council Agriculture & Fisheries Mr. John Mussington, who gave a brief history of Barbuda and identified the challenges Barbuda faced associated with climate change especially where the water quality and the use of innovative technology is needed to improve the agriculture sector. Mr. Mussington thinks that the Agriculture sector should invest in alternative energy solutions, aquaponics, and water harvesting techniques which are some of the few focus areas which should be driven in Barbuda.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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While in Barbuda the team visited the site on the strip of the Barbuda lagoon where the green engineering component activities will be implemented using the vetiver grass under the EBA CBF \u2013IICA Project as a potential land stabilization solution towards the soil erosion challenges which has been occurring since hurricane Irma.<\/div>\n
Several other meetings were conducted with other stakeholders such as the representatives for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)-Mr. Ika Fergus, the Caribbean Agriculture Research Development Institute (CARDI)-Paul Lucas, the Director of the Environment Division Ambassador Diann Black-Layne, and other local NGOs representatives such as the Antigua Beekeeping Cooperative and the Gilberts Agriculture Rural Development Centre (GARDC).<\/div>\n
IICA\u2019s Representative in the Eastern Caribbean States (ECS), Gregg Rawlins, expressed his pleasure in meeting development partners and beneficiaries of IICA\u2019s technical programs who have closely worked with the Institute over the years and was impressed with the level of collaboration between IICA and its stakeholders on agriculture and rural development initiatives where a number of joint projects have been executed in 2022 and others on the horizon in 2023 and beyond.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The courtesy visits meeting was also attended by IICA National Specialist Mr. Craig M. Thomas of the IICA Country Office in Antigua and Barbuda and was supported by the Ministry of Agriculture communication unit which offered full visibility during the visit.<\/div>\n
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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St. John\u2019s, 22nd, May 2023, The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) ECS Representative Mr. Gregg Rawlins visited Antigua and Barbuda, an annual activity which is implemented by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iica","category-news-notices"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6345"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6354,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6345\/revisions\/6354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agriculture.gov.ag\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}