Grenada and Cuba signs MOU aim at developing the agriculture sector

Grena­da and Cu­ba have signed an agree­ment that is in­tend­ed to re­sult in the Span­ish speak­ing coun­try pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance and sup­port aimed at boost­ing, de­vel­op­ing and en­hanc­ing the agri­cul­ture sec­tor.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Lennox An­drews told a news con­fer­ence on Tues­day that the agree­ment cov­ers four broad ar­eas for co­op­er­a­tion.

“The first one has to do with agri­cul­ture and veg­etable prod­ucts,” said An­drews, who was among four oth­er gov­ern­ment min­is­ters in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell who vis­it­ed Cu­ba on an of­fi­cial four-day trip from April 11-14.

“Specif­i­cal­ly, the doc­u­ment makes ref­er­ence to, ex­change ex­pe­ri­ences with agri­cul­ture pro­duc­ers, un­der­take train­ing for the pro­duc­tion of hor­ti­cul­ture seeds and grains adapt­ed to the cli­mat­ic con­di­tions and the in­tro­duc­tion of new va­ri­eties that are re­sis­tance plants and seeds,” he said.

“It al­so speaks to of­fer­ing tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance for the pro­duc­tion of fruits, veg­eta­bles and oth­er crops that are of in­ter­est to the two coun­tries. It al­so makes ref­er­ence to of­fer­ing tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance and train­ing in cli­mate re­silience agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices,” said An­drews who al­so serves as Min­is­ter for Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment and Plan­ning.

“We would al­so look at tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance in the area of veg­etable pathol­o­gy as well as agro-eco­log­i­cal man­age­ment and in the pro­duc­tion of or­na­men­tal flow­ers,” he added.

The sec­ond broad area is in the area of live­stock and an­i­mal prod­ucts.

“And here we will co­op­er­ate to im­prove the tech­niques in ar­ti­fi­cial in­sem­i­na­tion in sheep and goats…and move to­wards ge­net­ic im­prove­ment of our live­stock,” said An­drews.

He said the third area has to do with forestry and “here we are go­ing to con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions and ex­change in for­est han­dling and the oth­er ar­eas.

’With re­gards to the area of fish­eries and aqua­cul­ture, the broad ob­jec­tive is to es­tab­lish the bases that will al­low the par­ties to pro­vide each oth­er the tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion and as­sis­tance to ad­e­quate­ly de­vel­op aqua­cul­ture.”

An­drews told re­porters that the co­op­er­a­tion will in­volve a num­ber of planned ac­tiv­i­ties and will be based on con­sul­tan­cy, train­ing, tech­no­log­i­cal ex­change; ex­change of pro­fes­sions through the ex­e­cu­tion of an ac­tion plan in ar­eas of mu­tu­al in­ter­est.

“In the area of fish­eries we would fo­cus on tech­ni­cal ex­change specif­i­cal­ly for deep sea ma­rine fish­ing and as with re­gards to aqua­cul­ture, our co­op­er­a­tion will in­volve a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ar­eas, so there will be tech­ni­cal ex­change on tilapia and farm­ing in the fresh­wa­ter en­vi­ron­ment in­clud­ing shrimp farm­ing,” he said.

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