 The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Co-operatives recently held a consultation meeting with banana stakeholders with a view of apprising stakeholders of the current situation with the agriculture sector. Stakeholders highlighting the issues currently plaguing the sector also offered recommendations in the hopes of arriving at solutions, details in this report. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Co-operatives recently held a consultation meeting with banana stakeholders so as to update them on the state of the agriculture sector. The St. Lucia National Fair Trade Organization and stakeholders also seized the opportunity to provide recommendations to ministry officials so as to find solutions to the many challenges currently plaguing the sector. Some of the issues highlighted by stakeholders include the drought, quality of bananas available for export, inability of windfresh U.K. limited to pay farmers and the emergence of pests threatening the production of crops. Chair of the St. Lucia National Fair Trade Organization, Eustace Monroe's, indicated that the lack of payment for produce is adversely affecting farmers. We have been selling our fruit every week but unfortunately we have not been able to get our payments. Consequently, farmers are starved of getting the weekly payments and those payments is absolutely necessary. This is the payments that they would use to operate the farms. This is a cash flow that they need in basic operations like paying for farm labor and especially on a harvest day. So this is one of our key challenges at present and what we have seen with the decimation of this drought is that we would need some kind of assistance in relation to inputs and also to the rehabilitation of our farms. So this is a really, really huge challenge that we are facing at this time but we believe with government assistance the way forward we should be able to overcome this challenge. The chair explained that funds from the government of St. Lucia had assisted in paying farmers. However, since that payout, some seven weeks have elapsed and farmers have not been paid despite continuing to produce for sale. The issue according to Monroe's lies primarily with Winfresh UK Limited, the entity purchasing goods from the farmers. He noted however that the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Cooperatives Honourable Ezekiel Joseph has promised to address the issue. Honourable Ezekiel Joseph indicated that a meeting had been held with Winfresh and all relevant stakeholders. An independent body was hired to review the operations of Winfresh UK Limited so as to be able to make recommendations, to ensure viability and highlight that type of restructuring required for its survival. I spoke with the Chairman of Winfresh who is a gentleman, Arthur St. Vincent and he told me that the report is in circulation. I came out this morning and reviewed the report and in the coming week we will meet as a board to review the report and of course to go back to the stakeholders, the respective Prime Ministers to review the report and to see what are the recommendations we can implement short, medium and long term. So as far as the company in the UK, it has been, we are well on our way in looking at this company and to see how we can restructure this, definitely the company is experiencing a lot of financial difficulties and as shareholders we believe it is indeed first to intervene at this point in time. The Minister expressed that it is only right that the Ministry of Agriculture lobby on behalf of farmers so as to ensure they are paid for their goods. The government he noted continues to inject resources into Winfresh UK Limited to ensure it is able to pay farmers, including the recent contribution of 1 million dollars. The Minister did admit however that this was unsustainable, thus making the restructuring of the entity necessary. Minister Hon. Joseph explained that farmers will be receiving assistance with the other challenges. We know that we have a problem with the milleberg which we have just gotten a report from the research departments informing us that they got the identification then from a company in the US. So we are now putting in place protocols as to how we can reduce the population of the milleberg. So we are waiting for the company now, we are sorry we are waiting for the company but we are waiting for the stakeholders including the BPIP and the research department to come up with a programme that is an accosting for that programme so we in the Ministry can look at and see where we can get resources because we have a post-COVID assistance programme coming up so to see how we can support our farmers in reducing the population of that milleberg. The Ministry of Agriculture and by extension the Governmental's inclusion reaffirmed its commitment to assistance inclusion farmers where possible ensuring a thriving agriculture sector. From the Government Information Service, I am Janelle Norville.