 Agriculture Minister Hon. Alfred Prospecials said Lucia has the potential to develop and strengthen competitive value chains for high-value products such as seafood, herbs and spices, and highly perishable vegetables and fruits. And although these actions in support of value-added commodities and the diversification of agricultural export revenues are not new, the renewed zest for value chain development comes in light of the sharp focus being placed on nutrition and food security at this time. We had the Banana Festival and we saw all the work that our people, our local people are doing in terms of value-added from a number of our commodities there. We saw the same when we had the Mongo Festival. We are hoping to have a CMOS Festival and we know CMOS is becoming a big industry in Saint Lucia, especially in the rural areas and how it impacts the rural people. And value-added is an area of concern to me in that field. And I'm just hoping that we can give the support to those persons who are interested in agricultural processing. But I would like to see my vision is to see as many persons as possible getting there, but we need to move outside of Saint Lucia, find new markets regionally, internationally for our products. Agriculture leaders are adamant, insisting that growth within the agro-processing industry has the potential to stimulate and spur demand for raw material or produce from the agriculture industry and thereby create novel output on niche markets that increase the income of farmers and productivity within the sector. Whatever markets that are available for our farmers, whether it's cuckoo, whether it's fish, whether it's bananas, whether it's root crops, whether it's anything, I am happy with that. But what we have not been able to do very well is to take advantage of the market. So for example, we have a market readily available to us in the UK for our cuckoo, but we have not been able to meet the demand. We have not been able to meet the demand. So there are opportunities for our farmers to make money, but we do not have the available quantities to be able to meet the market needs. Agro-processing is important for a number of reasons, chief of which is the reduction in post-havest losses. Process foods also have greater price stability on the world market, increased market opportunities for exports, promote employment generation and enterprise development, all while ensuring the diversification of rural economies. From the Ministry of Agriculture, this is Amanda Fee-Clock reporting.