 Initial impact assessments post Hurricane Elsa for the banana crop on the island revealed devastation to 80% of fields. It is expected to take farmers at least 8 months to begin yielding as usual again. Government officials have swiftly begun planning and securing finances to recover the impacted cash crop and the agricultural sector overall as soon as possible. Jesse Leos tells us more. The government of St. Lucia has begun to reprioritize allocations toward the agriculture sector in wake of Hurricane Elsa's passage. According to Portfolio Minister Hon. Ezekiel Joseph, the preliminary assessments for the sector overall value damages and losses at over $30 million. The hardest hit was the banana crop. The initial reports reveal that 75-80% of the island's banana fields covering 1,814 acres were negatively impacted. The preliminary figure that we're looking at is over $36 million and that's preliminary because we had to do a rapid response assessment on come Saturday morning to Saturday afternoon. So, at least we could have given the European Minister some indication as to the impact. Your meeting tomorrow, that's the Ministry meeting tomorrow with all the heads because following that assessment we went back on the ground to do a more comprehensive analysis as to the impact. The sector that was having the hit is agriculture. The banana industry, our planting farmers, the livestock industry has also hit and a lot of farmers lost their pen. Our greenhouse farmers got severely damaged. Our fisher folks also, some of them got impacted negatively. Based on demand for bananas, officials anticipate disappointment in the market as there was a recent request for increased exports. Financing to the tune of $4.5 million has already been identified to get the agriculture industry back on its feet post-Elsa. There is a demand for the bananas. Now with that hurricane I'm sure there will be a lot of disappointments both locally and of course at the UK level because the main fact that they will have an interest in wanting to see an increase in our weekly export and now with almost 85% of the sector being badly damaged it will take some time for us to recover. It's for us now to see how we can engage these individuals to hear from them what will be their position as far as the intention moving forward but it's going to definitely affect our farmers and that's why I believe there's need for us as quickly as possible since we had that $4.5 million for the banana industry already in place. It's for us to see how we can reparatorise what we are going to do and what our support is going to be but in the coming week we will be able to articulate in a more positive way the areas that we will be supporting our farmers not only about banana farmers but agricultural farmers in general. Given the extent of the damage to the banana crop on the island, export to the international market is not expected to recommence until February or March 2022. Meantime, an extensive chopping program is scheduled to begin as soon as possible. For the Government Information Service, I am Jesse Leons reporting.