 Hello again, St. Lucia, and welcome to the program, Agriculture on the Move. I am Philip Sidney, your host. Today we are discussing a hurricane preparation to minimize damages on farms. That is not new. I think every farmer knows what to do in preparing for a hurricane. But it is our duty in the ministry to ensure that we still remind you of what you should do. Sometimes you forget. Agriculture is a business. There is money involved. And you need to protect your investment. So today with me to discuss this is the engineering unit. Our three gentlemen here with me, Mr. Kwisi Goddard, who is an engineer and he is the officer in charge of that unit. We have Joel Ramin, who is also attached to that unit. And of course, my good friend, Quint Odlam, who is an old head in the ministry. And of course, he is here to share his views. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Quint, I know Quint well Goddard has such a view because we as head, we need to know, people out there need to know, you know, what is the function of the engineering unit? Well, the Agriculture Engineering Services Division is a unit that is primarily responsible for looking at interventions, dealing with soil conservation and drainage, agricultural water management. And farm power through we fundamentally deal with a tractor hire scheme. Normally, the agricultural engineering is also concerned with, you could see preventive measures. That's why when you start a building or you start a farm or any process you start, you normally contact an engineer or technical officer, agricultural officer to assist you with planning ahead. So actually consider these issues that we're going to speak about in the initial stages of your farm from how you place your farm. So that in the longer run, I mean, we're talking about disaster preparedness today. Disaster preparedness is not something that we should recommend doing last minute. It should be something that we should be thinking of from the onset of our operation. So in our unit, we try, we really double in a lot of different technologies in all areas. We look at appropriate technologies in each of the areas which fit our population and our farmers to assist them with improving the efficiency of how they operate on their farm, improving the efficiency of water use and land use and labor use, energy use on farms. Okay, so with that in mind, okay, let's move on to the metric region in terms of how do you tell a farmer to prepare himself the oncoming hurricanes? Because we, I know it starts in June, the hurricane starts in June and I was told in December. So right now we are in the preparatory stages to ensure the farmer knows exactly what to do. So what is expected of the farmer from your end? What do you think? Well, from my end, I guess I can speak about aquaponics because under the agricultural engineering services division, we also do aquaponics, we do hydroponics, we do water management, we do GIS and mapping. And we also do biogas digesters. We help in the design and technical, give technical advice for greenhouse or protective structures. So I will just double into the aquaponics aspect. So aquaponics is basically the incorporation of those who don't know, fish and plants. So the plants get nutrients from the fish. So for preparedness in the aquaponics stage, let's say you have a smaller, because a lot of people have smaller aquaponics systems in the backyard and some farmers have larger systems. Now like Mr. Sidney said, when you would prepare for disaster preparedness, and Kwissia also mentioned that, it's supposed to be done in the initial stages. So if you're a large farmer, aquaponics farmer, you would think of disaster preparedness from the onslaught. So things like the structural stability of your system, you would think of how you should make them strong enough to withstand certain types of category wind, things like backup for your system. The system operates on pumps. So you need water pumps, you need air pumps. So without the water pumps, the water will not circulate. So you know during them, there might be a disaster where there might be electrical outage. So these kind of things have been a possibility. You have to think of okay, so if I'm out of electricity for a day or two, how would my fish manage or stay alive within that stage? So things you might do is, if you have, like let's say you have a heavy stocking ratio, so that means you have a lot of fish in a small area, let's say a 200 gallon tank. That's usually the size of the average aquaponics fish tank. So let's say you have 100 fish and maybe there might be an electrical outage. What you would do is that you would actually separate the fish and put them into smaller containers so that they would use up less oxygen. Because the main thing is that when there is no electricity maybe for a day, they may not have enough oxygen in the water. So what you would do, you would just move some of the fish and put them in separate containers so they would use less oxygen from the water. And also another suggestion would be rotating your water so if the water supply doesn't come back the same day, maybe you can empty out the majority of the tank and fill it with fresh oxygen in the water. Right. So that's an example of what you can do from the aquaponics standpoint. We also do GIS on mapping, not the document information service, but actually geographical information systems. So for farmers who have large farms, it's also a good idea for you to get your farm mapped. So you will know the size of your farm, the acreage, you will know where your boundaries are at, you will know what type of crops you are growing and the different parts of your farm. So if there is a disaster and you lose a certain amount of crops, you don't need and you have to give a report maybe for insurance purposes, you wouldn't depend on maybe last minute for to hire a private person or the ministry to go and give an assessment. But if you come to engineering, let's say on a random day you tell them, well, I have this farm in that area and I really need to know, just have an aerial photo of where my farm is at right now in this stage of production just before the hurricane season begins because you say to yourself, what if something happens, right? So you need to know, okay, calculate how much money you would have made. So you would have all these things documented just for the worst case scenarios. Great, great, great. So print on the other hand, okay, you're moving into other structures. The farmer has established his greenhouses, okay. You have the hoop greenhouses, you have the conventional greenhouses. What would you advise a greenhouse farmer to do prior to the hurricane coming in? Okay, for the greenhouse farmers, one of the main things they would have to do is remove the plastic, right? The plastic serves as a barrier for the wind. If there's no plastic, there's less contact for the wind and there's less of a structure for the wind to destroy. So the greenhouse farmers, I mean, it's something that should be established by whoever is supplying the greenhouse to them. It's common practice that come the hurricane season or come the advice of a hurricane, you should remove the plastic on your greenhouses. Okay. We say greenhouses, but a lot of them are protected structures. Yeah, shade houses. Shade houses, yeah. Greenhouses are specific structure. Yeah, but for the protected structures, the shade houses, due to the way they designed, most times it is not that difficult to remove the plastic. All right. So we advise the farmers to go ahead and remove the plastic. Okay. To add to your earlier question about aspects of engineering, engineering came about to provide the engineering services of agriculture to the other departments and to the farmers. So we provide services to the fisheries department. We are the ones who actually design and build fish bonds, right? So we provide services to the extension unit in terms of irrigation, in terms of land preparation, drainage, that kind of stuff. And we also provide services to the vet unit in terms of the design of pig pens and the construction of biogas digesters. Okay. So in terms of the pig pens and the fall coops, there's nothing much you could do with them. True. It's a matter of designing them from the beginning to withstand these conditions. But after they have been constructed, sorry, there's not much you could do. That's why it's kind of important that you get the right information before you go ahead and construct. Great, great. A lot of farmers, sorry, they lose their pens simply because of the design and location. Great, great. Yes, because you have some of this infrastructure that we're dealing with, some of them being constructed because you have a lot of people have skills. They can build, they can do masonry, they can do all this. But you build something in an area where it's at the bottom of a hill on the side of a hill and you have excess runoff at any one time. So in terms of preserving the structural integrity of these things, so that during a major event you do have swelling of the walls, cracking, structural integrity being damaged. In terms of even just maintaining the hygiene, because during these times you have high humidity, so these things can propagate fungus and other these things that cause diseases in animals. So even during that time we talk about structures, we talk about what we do on the land, we talk about preserving, doing things in the initial like putting the contour drains, trying to reduce runoff so that you can reduce that incidence of probably landslides or floods because in a hurricane or in a major storm event what we have, we have a major incidence of rains, high winds, high relative humidity and all of that and the main thing farmers are concerned about is their stock, whether it's plants or the animals, you know, I mean in Senbusha we bear very poor in storage. So for example something is happening and the farmer will run and collect all these watermelon in the field prematurely to try to store it. He might not have the storage conditions. So all that is a consideration, the storage of your inputs, the storage of your outputs, the storage, the protection of your machinery, your equipment as well. You know because these things for example in Maki, in Maki almost every other year we get like a flood down there in Maki and the flood is like I wanted to say a sea. It's true. Because one day we were passing through Maki and we actually saw we saw that flood and I got scared we had to turn back and pass through bogies. The amount of water that was going far less for the sheep and the livestock you have that extensive. So in terms of preserving structural integrity, preserving your inputs because you know the cost of inputs now are rising. So in terms of even preventing a further shortage in food because you know we always have these things out after Maki. Let me just add to that. I just wanted to remind the farmers from irrigation standpoint I don't think we touched on that but in terms of preserving your equipment other farmers you know they abstract water from low line areas and the pump is located almost in the river line. Now some farmers also it's a hassle for them to carry the pump every day. Some farmers actually build a little structure you know to prevent thieves from taking it away but then you have to remember that if you there is a notice of a strong storm or hurricane it might just be a little depression or heavy rains. The same way fishermen are a little bring their boots in. The farmers have to be vigilant so that they can remove all their equipment from the pipes, from the suction pipes, from the pumps and also from the irrigation standpoint from trip lines and sprinklers. So you can see yourself have a lot of hassle because after a storm, after a flood like Christy mentioned in Marquis you have to be going and dig and everything is lost. You have to try and go and hunt for a sprinkler head, you have to hunt for a trip line. It's a hassle. We just want to advise farmers pay attention, listen to the bulletins and take action before. On a good point we'll come back to that Quentin because we are due for our break at this point. You're watching our recursion move, stay tuned. We'll be back soon. Banana farmers, remember me? I destroyed the Grumichel banana variety some years ago. Now, my cousin Tropical Race 4 or TR4 a fusarium wilt banana disease is on the horizon in a more aggressive form and can wipe out the banana industry in a flash. Be vigilant, don't bring any other plants or plant tissue into the island. Report any unusual symptoms on your banana plots to the Department of Agriculture at telephone 468-5600 or the extension officer in your area. Remember, protect our vital banana industry. Welcome back to the program Agriculture on the Move, of course we are talking preparation for disaster hurricane and as I said, the hurricane season starts in June, so we need to alert the farmers, just to remind them they know what to do, but it's our duty to remind them. Question, there is an issue I don't know how to it bothers me, I'll tell you why. For example, during some disaster they had maybe a few years ago there was a farmer with a poultry pen, right, next to a river. That damaged his pen. He went back and reconstructed, he got money from the government, of course they were giving money to recovery. He went back and he built the same place and the same thing happened. So, guide me, I mean what do you do in the case like this? I mean, would you advise the farmer, hey look, this is not a place you should construct a pen, you know, and from the set in other words, it should not have happened in the first place. Quint. Yeah, Mr. Sidney, we have a situation in St. Lucia where anybody becomes a farmer overnight. Okay, so somebody decides to go into pig production and without proper consultation, they just go ahead and get started. Most times we are informed when there is a problem which is when it's too late. Right. The way it should be done, if you need to construct a pig pen, a fallcube or any agricultural activity, the first thing you do, you get in touch with your extension officer. And according to the activity you intend to get into, your extension officer will guide you further. Some of the things that the extension officers know for themselves, they would just go ahead and tell the street off the back. Some of us, they would have to seek assistance. Now when they seek our assistance, we would come in and give you a farm analysis, tell you where is the best place to put what accordingly. Right? But sadly, very often when we come on site work has already started, work is already finished. We usually come when there is a problem. Right? Secondly, we do not have the authority to stop the farmer. We are just the engineering unit. Okay. The authority to stop the farmer comes from another department, another ministry, put it like that. It doesn't even come from the ministry of agriculture. So our hands are tied behind our backs. There is nothing we could do to stop the farmer. Most times the farmer is the owner of the property. Correct. And there is very little control we have over what the farmer does. Okay, so that happens. His pen gets damaged. He fits in the program, the officer He qualifies for compensation. He goes back and he builds the pen in the exact spot. And it happens again. Should there be something saying, hey, you cannot get compensated? Okay, it's who approves the structure. I would think that's ministry of agriculture. This is out of the hands of agriculture. It's a structure that's being built. What we would do, we would provide with the guidelines as to how the structure should be built. But the ministry of planning are the ones who approve. And also we will also give them our input as to if it's appropriate, the location. That's the most important thing. So we would tell them that, okay, this is a structure, yes, but we did a preliminary side visit and we have decided that, okay, maybe the farmer can build the structure somewhere else, which is safer and we can approve. Or if there is no alternative location, we will tell them straight, whoever it is the funding agency, or be it the planning, we will tell them that we advise the farmer that that's not appropriate place to rebuild the structure. So we will have it documented that we are against it and he cannot build it there. Like Quinn said, at the end of the day, the buck does not stop at us. You made up an important point there in terms of the lending institution, you know, who would facilitate the farmer to get a loan, which is fine, but then it's not the right location. So when something happens now, he is impeded because he cannot pay his loan because everything is gone. So that is a serious matter. You have to watch it, you have to also look, okay, the farmer experienced that in the beginning. He went in, he ended up getting in, running into this problem, right? In this situation you speak in there, it's almost like he has no other place that's appropriate for that. He doesn't own no other land, that's the only land, that's his only way of making a livelihood. Like Joel was saying, that we come in, we try to do an assessment of the area, assessment of whether water goes, assessment happens where. If there's a possibility of building some kind of modification of the structure to help it to the major storm. Because normally sometimes when we look at these things, we like to look at, when we have to do this kind of analysis, we look at rainfall over time, a major storm event, how much rain does it bring, you know, the possibility of landslide runoff, destruction to property. So if you can factor in that and there's a possibility, if there's not a possibility, there's not much we can do. We understand the farmer would sometimes go ahead and do the same thing. The only other thing is that, if you can go into something else. Because you find for farmers, egg production and poultry production is one of the enterprises that demands less in terms of human resource and all that. It's very easy for them to go into that once you have the momentum. So there must be, this is a nice discussion that would probably go deeper. What would they, what would the farmer do in that case? But from our standpoint, looking at an assessment and realizing here, you know what, every time it falls that you have too much water, we could try and organize some things on the contours, look at the topography, try and accommodate for the runoff somehow, try and accommodate for the drainage somehow. And I think that should be done before learning institutions. That's a good segue into another service we provide biogas, so long. Yeah. The farmers they into pig production, mainly for money. They are not all that concerned about the environment. The effects of their production. From the Ministry of Agriculture standpoint, we have realized that a lot of pig pens are constructed close to waterways. Because pigs, you need a lot of water to clean and to keep the pig pen tidy. So the runoff from the pig pens with all the contamination from the pig mess ends up in the river. So as an intervention, we try to construct biogas digesters. We have resulted to being able to construct them out of totally local material. Not anything in order for us to construct biogas digesters. So that's just one of the interventions that we have been trying to push. But then again, it's not compulsory. Okay. If we are able to convince the farmer, we get it done. But it's the farmer who still has to buy the local materials to get it done. So it's not compulsory. That's out of our hand. So you're saying that intervention is a technology that appropriates for the environment. So you're saying that for example, he goes to SLDB for a loan to go into swine production and can that not be a criteria for him getting the loan? Yeah, but part of the construction of the pig pen it might require a septic tank. Right. But even the septic tank overflow because most of them are so close to the river that there is no space for all of that. So even the septic tank overflow goes into the river. The water is not properly treated and gets rid of all the bacteria before you could drop it back into the river. Now there are many advantages to the biogas digester versus the septic tank. The biogas digester, the main thing is that it provides cooking gas. Secondly, it provides compost, pit moss which is manure. And thirdly, we're still trying to see how we can turn the liquid manure into a liquid, the liquid waste, sorry into liquid fertilizer because it is loaded with nutrients. By then it has no more bacteria but it has a lot of nutrients. So that again, by so doing there's no runoff in the river or stream near by hopefully, yes. If you add value to the waste the farmer will no longer allow the waste to go around the drain. But talking about drain, sorry talking about drain is a little diversion because we are on the hurricane season and drainage is one of the most important aspects. Okay. Drainage is a national issue yet still it passes through individual people's property so sometimes it is controlled by an individual person. All right. We divert drains right to send the water where we want them where we want it to go. That should not happen. Drainage is one of the most serious issues when it comes to natural disasters. Our drains are usually blocked and very often they are not designed properly. So something you could run and do when you get a warning drainage is something you have to do it in advance. You could remove the plastic if you get a notice a warning. You cannot go clean acres of drains if you get a warning. So the drainage is something that we have to maintain. Right? You do not just do it simply because it's the rainy season. It needs to be maintained throughout because you could get a flash flood at any time because of the biggest disaster. And funny enough drains are the things that are least cared about already because like my colleague is saying it's a national issue it's like you go to an individual farm and he's only concerned with the size of his beds. The little 50 centimeter drains in between. But the drainage network that connects his farm to other farms and the whole in the whole watershed is ignored and you see if they have a problem at any one point you'll have a problem in the whole. Because for example if you have to really look at some of these valleys where we normally have floods in the valleys you realize oftentimes we have salt water intrusion. Oftentimes we have a lot of problems with excess water right? And at the same time in these same areas there's a possibility of managing this water very well. But the individual farmers to come together in groups that is very challenging. It's always like if we come in we have an idea we have a big project that comes in and say hey we're going to look at the drainage intervention area. But after that project is done you know we I don't know if it is we don't have enough influential power or it's not the farmers not seeing when they do a drain and not get a dollar. You know maybe if a contractor comes to get a dollar you know but the thing is this is not factored into a national movement. Because for example we have a big opportunity in this drier period to clean our drains we see it happening the main drains have been done but the lateral drains are not taken care of. The reason we say drainage is a national issue. Because usually a drain will cross modern one boundary or modern one property. So even if you do your section the other person is not doing anything. Exactly so you know it has to be looked at on a national level. It's not a matter of you just cleaning your piece of the drain. It's a network. It's a network. It's a national thing and people have to take pride in it too you know. I am notice places where for example that farmer or that person living in the bodily area will clean his or her drain. But then when it gets to you, you leave it alone and it goes onto the road and it damages the road. I mean if we all do play our part. There are different kinds of drain cleaning. Because I would like to say something that a lot of people might not really appreciate. The way we go about cleaning our rivers it's wrong. Because we cause more destruction than good. So even in cleaning drains you need to be careful. When we talk about cleaning drains, usually we talk about removing debris and maybe some grass cutting. But it is important that you allow the grass to grow to protect the drains. So when we say cleaning drains people need to understand what type of cleaning we are talking about. Even when we clean our rivers we actually clean the river banks which increases erosion. So we have a good intention but we do it wrong way. Gentlemen we have come to the end of the program you know. Very interesting. Fat 2. I want to thank you Chris for being here. Thank you Joel and Quinn for being here. I'm hoping that you will continue to do good work and to again enlighten the farmer as to what to do. But it's not coming to the end and saying we're going to be doing that now. But the preparatory stage is when it's going to be established you need to know to do it well. And in the design stage. Thank you very much. You've been watching Our Reculture of the Move. This is our program and remember agriculture is our business. Eat Fresh. It's the Lucia's Best. I'm Philip Sidney. Goodbye.