 But in conversation I like theiet backdrop Open nthfo you Could just carry Th contextual Lift it Put it aside భ్ిలంిలన్చరనంంం పరాకని ఆన్ట్నిల్నిర్త్టాడికా adrenaline థ్మిక్నినిలికిలాన్చాసిపిమినారగాచానాసి పరరటిసిత్నాసికిటీీకునికనినిరి� క్తుమ్ం క్తంలుమేస్నంంనరె సోట్న్ఁచిమ్చిందింరంచిట్చిమాతిలోక్నికిమా నెట్యక్ట్న్పశతకట్టస్రణాత్దటాతునిసోటుస్యదిక్స్తే� ἀρ ἀνᾳ ἂπὼ Ἀ такое ἀνᾰ Ἀπᾶ ἀ washes ὚ ὁ ὑ ἀ ἂτᾱ ἂτΆ ἀ ἀτᾳ ἀ ἀνᾳ ἀλᾳ ἀφᾶ ἀπεὙ ἀνᾳ ἀγᾶ ἀνᾳ ἀνᾳ ἀεᾳ ἀνᾳ ἀ ἀ ἀνᾳ ἀνᾳ ἀνᾳ ἀ ἀνᾳ ᴀᾳ ἀ ἔᾳ ἀ ἀνᾳ ἀ ἀνᾳ ἀ ὁ ὇ ἀ ἀ ἀ ἀνᾳ ἀ ἀ nᾳ ἀᾳ ὁ ᵀ· And as you know, the climate change phenomenon again is pushing against your agricultural sector causing severe problems from the severe winds, the severe floods, the increase in pest and disease as a result of the phenomenon. And Cardi, in our responsible approach, we have been doing a lot of work in bringing in a variety of resistant to some of these pest and disease. And resistant to some of these so-called phenomena. For example, I've very mentioned a few, but for example, we are looking at from again World Vegetable Center in headquarters in Taiwan, we're looking at various sweet potato resistant weevils, resistant to weevils. Sweet potato plants that are showing resistance to the sweet potato weevils. We are looking at drought resistant crops, saline resistant crops, saline resistant crops in terms of what we have right now, where the sea intrusion or what you call here, the high level of the sea coming in. Salinity. Salinity. So we are going to have crops that can do all those type of things, even livestock. So there is a lot of discussion, a lot of research ongoing, not just the salinity, all the 14 countries that Cardi has membership in and offices in. We are all working together for the Caribbean to ensure we do our best to reposition the Caribbean in light of the current phenomena of climate change. Yeah, and also looking at youth. Yes, and also looking at our food and nutrition security strategy. Very important, extremely important. That's why we are also looking at work in terms of youth in developing agriculture. Yes. Because we realize a lot of the farmers are aged. Most of them are aged about 49, going up to 55, 65. 65, 70. So we are now looking at various projects and initiatives that can get more youth involved in agriculture. There is an inclination towards using more computers and using drones and all that type of thing. In collaboration with our Ministry of Agriculture from different countries. Like people say, to sex it up for the youth. Make it interesting for them. Make it interesting for them to get involved. And there are many things happening. Some of our IT specialists are looking at what can be done to make the agricultural sector one that has a greater leniency on remote control farms. So there is a lot of discussion centered around that in preparing the youth involvement in agriculture. In terms of your work program, your annual work program, are you all working in tandem with the Ministry, especially the plant research division? Yes. Well, yes. Recently, this year, well, from last year December into now, the CARLIS and LUSHA, we have been working in the Ministry of Agriculture Research and Development Team in controlling the South American Bamboo River. We have done extensive trainings on the management of the South American Bamboo River in terms of how to make the traps, how to use the traps. And the Ministry of Agriculture has ran with it in terms of they are now, they have a database on where they have sorted the weevil and numbers of populations of what different pockets in the country. And that data is open to be shared. And we have also taken a step further. Last year also, I think we did some work with HOTEL CHOCOLA. When we train the HOTEL CHOCOLA farmers that are growing coconuts, inter-croped with cocoa, because the whole chocolate thing is important to HOTEL CHOCOLA. So we train the farmers with the Ministry of Agriculture and personally use control for both cocoa and coconuts and when you have the integration happening. It is very successful and the Ministry of Agriculture staff was there and supported and they have said that they are very good at what they do, the research and development team. And our work continues with them. We are hopefully, we got some, what do you call it? We got some natural organic pesticide for the coconut mite, because it is a critical issue in St. LUSHA. And early next year we plan to now do the trials to test it out in the field. A few farmers have already been contacted who are willing to allow us to use the coconut trees and apply this natural pesticide. We hope that it will work. The research shows that it should work. Do you have any June Plasm Bank activity in your field in Denver so that if farmers want planting material they can source you? Yes, that's a very important question and a very important point. For us, yes, we are working on and have and building on our sweet potato June Bank. I have collected and with the help of my staff and others collected a lot of different types of sweet potatoes. But our greatest pursuit is to get the six-week sweet potato. Some say it's a myth, but others say it's for real. We are trying to bring in some from outside of St. LUSHA and Tiger House said they have it. I know about Amos Harid because I saw the documentation of the experimental effect. So we are trying to bring it in because we saw that as a very important type of sweet potato. If it truly exists and we can bring in the same wishes, it will be wonderful because we are talking about a sweet potato that can produce tubers or sweet potatoes in six weeks. So can you imagine post-disaster, hurricane like what about Maria Ditto Dominica and people want food. Just as a cook-over can do it in 67 weeks, imagine a sweet potato that can produce tubers or sweet potatoes in six weeks. That's a massive contribution to national food security. So we have made that a very important component of our work, especially in St. LUSHA. And we hope to get it in from either Antigua or Bahamas. But we are building a gene bank for it, getting different varieties, planting it. And we are also building a gene bank for the yams. I recognize that the yam plant material availability is simply depletion. It's depleted, yes. So we are searching the Caribbean. We try to import from Jamaica, but Jamaica has its own issues. Dominica has its own issues. The French side, God Loop, have expressed interest. They have the blue or the purple kush kush. They have the white kush kush and they have the yellow kush kush. And they also have a few other types of yams, like the white yams, yellow yams. So we are desperately trying to bring them into St. LUSHA. Of course, working in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture Plant Health to make sure we don't bring any pests. But some years ago, I don't even remember, there were a few varieties from Africa, the Belep and the Kelembayo. That's extinct, eh? Well, it doesn't exist. There are still a few farmers here in the pockets that have it. But that's what Cadi wants to bring all these. Yes, I'm saying, yes. We collected and collected and planted in the bank. So if in case again, any extreme weather pattern happens, that Cadi can either have some material that either tissue culture can do tissue culturing, or we can do mini-setting and distributed farmers. So because of the building, yams, sweet potatoes, we are also working on cassava. Beautiful. And we are also looking for the future next year. Because of the increase in hybrid pressure in St. LUSHA and diabetes, the research has shown that bit, there is sugar bit and there is bit, bit are an extremely super food which has nitrates in it. We as tumeric has nitric acid. But tumeric, you have to drink tumeric with something like cayenne pepper to stimulate, to create the nitrate, but bit naturally has the nitrates. You know what nitrates do? Nitrates cause the blood vessels, arteries and veins to expand, to allow the blood to flow. So it's a very important crop and we're looking next year to bring in some bit and introduce bit production into St. LUSHA. And another thing we found very interesting, again, Cadi tries to respond to the needs of the community. Again, because of the high level of diabetes in the country and in the Caribbean, we found out that there is a plant called agave that is highly spoken of by a lot of the naturalist medicine users. Well, agave syrup is important in a big way in St. LUSHA. And we found agave can be grown in St. LUSHA. Very good, very good. And in fact, St. LUSHA already has agave. People don't know what it is. There's the Caribbean agave and there's also the blue agave right in St. LUSHA. People grow it like an ornamental plant, like a flower. But they don't know what it is. So Cadi wants to look at next year sometime to grow it, process it and then introduce that as livelihoods for the youth and persons interested. So we can now reduce our food import bill at the same time taking care of the diabetic situation in St. LUSHA. So most of our research is kind of relevant research. Well, we are due for our break. You are watching agriculture to move. Stay tuned. We'll be back very, very soon. Everyone is at risk for getting a foodborne illness. While most foodborne illness cases are mild and go unreported. Long-term health complications and even deaths can occur from a foodborne illness. Foodborne illnesses are caused by contamination of food at any stage of preparation. If you are a food handler involved in home-based food production, meat, fish, chicken or a big shop, as a food vendor, how you prepare food can put your customers at risk. Do you know the risks and how to avoid them? The St. LUSHA Bureau of Standards can help you. For more information, contact the St. LUSHA Bureau of Standards at 456-0546 or email SLBS at candw.lc or visit the website at www.slbs.org.lc St. LUSHA Bureau of Standards, making quality and standards our way of life. Welcome back to the programme, Agriculture on the Move. With me, of course, is Mr. Barry Nusentus, the country representative for Cardi St. LUSHA, and we're talking about Cardi as an organisation that has been established in LUSHA for quite a while and their contribution to the agriculture sector over the years. Before we get into your open day, I just want to mention, when we talk about sweet potato, I don't know if you realise that there's a lot of cross-pollination with the sweet potato. There's some new varieties that are just showing up. I think that's an area of interest. I think you should be looking into this because I'm seeing the colours are changing. So I think it's an area that you all should be able to... Well, we are doing a lot of characterization of the sweet potato. Not in St. LUSHA right now, but in the other countries. St. LUSHA had done it, I think, in 2015, but things have changed since then. So there's another country doing the characterization because as you already said, there have been some sort of... well, appears to be some kind of a plant breeding happening on its own. So we are looking at that and we're also looking at bringing in not just sweet potatoes, but we're also looking at the... the cassava which I've mentioned before, the yams and also some woken dashing. It's a critical food source. But you know, I remember the sore ale man. Oh yes. That was the one at Christmas time. Mankhadi was selling a lot of stuff. Well, we're really selling, you know. It started already. Yeah, it started already. Very good, very good. If anybody has it, we're also pursuing what was said to be the all year yielding sore ale plant. Yes, yes, yes. We've gotten a few we've tried. It didn't really work, but we're still trying to get it. If you have it, let us have it because we want to make it available to everybody because there are a lot of rural livelihoods that are dependent on their agricultural sector and would love to have some of these seeds to plant. Beautiful, great. Kadi openly. Over the years, I remember Kadi, that was a big thing for Kadi. You know, we were invited to the Kadi field station in Denri, well, Denri. And we saw so much. Kadi was able to show us so much of what they were doing, their experimental work, you know. And of course they were giving us a background of what they did over the years. I know it is still on, but it's not happening on the field anymore. So tell us again, I mean, why not the field and why else went out? Yes, the thing is, Kadi is not having a country representative scientist for almost seven years now. There was not much innovative work going on. We were doing more commercial production and planting material distribution and production. But now that I'm on board, the first year is just building stock. But by next year, December, we would have been doing things that we can now showcase at the field station. But for now what we're doing this year is we're looking at having what do we call the open day exhibition, but also the Home Food Systems Conference. At the Home Food Systems Conference, during the opening ceremony, we will showcase what we've been working on for this year, in particular in St. Lucia. And this has different components in it. Because the coconut industry is so important to us, as you really know, when you drive by the roadside, you see so many people selling coconut by the roadside. And the statistics show last show that there are about 150 families that depend on coconut water. There's coconut oil, both virgin and pressed coconut oil. Both virgin and processed coconut oil are massive markets. And coconut can be a very important crop. As a result, there was a project that Cardi was the main implementer for. It was a Caribbean coconut industry development project. So this project, we decided this year for open day that we would do, we tried to promote the coconut again by having a four category competition. We're looking at the best decorated bouquet where you must use coconut plant parts in the bouquet. And then we're also looking at the best decorated coconut cake. Because there are a lot of creative arts people here also. We're also looking at the best interior decorated room. The room will be 9 feet by 6 feet. And then we're also looking at the biggest coconut cake. And I'm hoping that someone in St. Lucia will be able to look at the bouquet records. Tallest or biggest or widest. All to promote coconut because of how important it is the entire plant, all plant parts are so important. And the prices are very big. We have 1000 EC dollars for the first price, 750 EC dollars for the second price, 500 dollars for the third price. And people that are interested today at Midnight will be the deadline to send your registration forms in. And on the Cardi day, we will be looking at which is Monday 11th of December at the Blue Coral Mall. There we will be looking at the finalists and judging the finalists. From 9am and then at 11am we stand at the Home Food Systems Conference. At the Home Food Systems Conference it has two arms of responsibility. One arm is for national food security. We're trying to encourage people to get interest in growing what they eat and eat what they grow in backyard farming or home farming. It fresh solutions best. Because we recognize that during COVID what happened food became an issue. And the price of food going up we want people to be able to at least find us a home food system that works for them where they can produce something that they can eat. If they cannot buy to buy, they can grow it from both livestock and plants and even fisheries. Last year at our Home Food Systems Conference we had exhibits of home grown fish as a protein. You have tilapia in aquarium. You don't have as many as a aquaponic farmer would have but you have a certain amount that you can actually cook and eat. This year we were doing that also but this year we're using a few other fish species. We've been working with the fish department and they have a fish called the pachoo. Very big fish. And we work with them to showcase it at the event. They also will showcase the shrimps and also tilapias. But also there's a fish called the mili local is called the mili but it's actually called the mountain mullet. But the real scientific name is mountain mullet. We'll also be showcasing that it also has potential as an alternative. So we're doing that also but at that event we'll be bringing in some specialties to come in. We'll have Chef Orlando coming in to display how you can creatively use some of our local produce and make some interesting dishes out of it. We'll be having the there's a superior fish supplies in collaboration with Marine Pea Chef and Magnick. And now looking at what's called Kidge culture of the red drum fish. So they'll be coming into a presentation to that two persons when you're using the red drum fish and how it can be cooked and how it can be worked with. We also have someone looking at how you can take local fruits and juices and make popsicles. And what can be done in the water and there's a process in the water. Of course we're going to have other presentations on home food systems different types of aquaponics and hydroponics will be in display and will also be presented to the audience. And then we'll have the exhibition right after where we'll come and see what they can do and see samples of it. So that's the rundown of what's likely to happen on Monday level. Now Khadi day is normally on December the 5th or it's centred around December the 5th. Some countries do it some days before some do it on the day, some days a few days after we decided it was a few days after to give the participants in the competition a few more, a little more time on Monday way to prepare themselves and we're hoping that they will participate to this competition. So how many participants are you hoping to accommodate at that exhibition? Well we're looking at this, having at this six finalists for each of the four categories. We've had quite a few persons that have already registered so we're hoping that they continue in their thrust and that we can short list to at least six finalists for each of the categories who will showcase their products at the event. Is that opening ceremony? Yes. The opening is at 11 am and it is subsequently will be after it then you go into the conference itself. Okay. At the conference, what is expected? Before the conference we're going to have Chef Orlando Oh that's the conference. He's going to do a presentation. He's going to talk about the red drone fish and new type of fish that they use from the French side. And as I mentioned before all this presentation will be done and then to give us insight into other ways of doing food other forms of generating and producing food. Have you all gotten the schools involved in that activity? The sad thing is schools about to close are more or less as closed so in my discussion of Ministry of Education officials it was not seemed possible to involve schools at this point because schools more or less closing right now if not closed. You'll notice the traffic has declined because not many students go into school right now. So they have not but hopefully in the new year we will do something else and involve them in it. Moving forward when that event is over I'm sure you have an annual work program for Kali What do you expect what do you expect to get from Kali for 2020 through 2024? Lots of stuff you know let's try to name a few for instance we of course the heat resistant varieties and validate them and test them in this initial context also we are looking at the the testing of eucalyptus trees because eucalyptus is a natural insect repellent so we are looking at for example planting eucalyptus trees alongside coconut trees to see if that will repair the mites when we are ready to cook and get the seeds in we started speaking in the Ministry of Culture Plant Health Department we are looking to do that to try it out we are also looking at the agave biological control so we are going to look to some work with the agave and see how it can be processed into the agave syrup which can be a new form of livelihood for some people and even the eucalyptus trees when you generate the oil from the leaves it's a very expensive oil so we are opening up solutions to have new livelihoods and for self-employment to be interested in coming and producing eucalyptus oil we are also looking at some work again I can mention the mullet fish we want to grow it and see how big it can really get because when I made the Dominica I saw some almost 12 inch looking ones so we want to have it on site and see how really big it can get statistically you have different types of lens but we want to grow it in a controlled environment and watch how it is how big it can get what will it get we also want to do some work on the bananas in terms of banana tasting we are aware that the red banana which some people like and some don't but it's a very healthy banana in terms of the nutrition content of it it has anti-oxins anti-inflammatory properties it has a lot more nutritive value than the normal cavendish but it's not very popular we want to do some taste testing we will give ministry of tourism go in the hotels and actually have the guests they do some eye appeal testing taste testing and field testing and see what comes up if the tourists there who have a different mindset than us because it's a local name for the red banana I don't want to mention it there it's a kind of a tune off so we are going to do some taste testing based on the countries and how they respond and the type of data we get it can speak to a certain direction for the agricultural sector these are bananas we also want to do a lot of work on there is a sensor again using IT there is a sensor that we have a project for that it can automatically detect the South American palm of a tree if it flies by anywhere so the parameter of the sensor is taking data so we know actually how many of these weevils are actually around definitely so as we about to end a few moments to tell us again about the open day in terms of the date where and the time it starts okay so folks the carry open day will be at the blue coral mooring castries in the boulevard on the second floor the conference room on the second floor will be where the conference will take place the exhibition will be in the general launch area of the second floor the competitions will take place also in the general launch floor for the interior decoration there will be the six by nine feet booths on the second floor launch area that the persons that are shortlisted will go in there and do their thing and showcase their talent we believe that interior decoration there are quite a few talented people around we want to let the world let the people see what they can do and get some more visibility you have your wedding you have your christening the different events some of these people you can contact them and they can provide their services to you likewise the bouquet the bouquet competition the bouquet competition is open to all flower shops and anybody that does flower decoration it's open to everybody the biggest coconut cake and the best decorated coconut cake competition is open to the bakeries, to chefs to restaurants and you have that skill set come and showcase you know what you need to promote your skill set and promote your product so come in and be a part of this great event as we try to encourage innovation and creativity and productivity of our community well come around and thank you for being here I wish you success on that day and of course I am looking for big and better things for Kali in this 23-24 thank you for being here agriculture on the move thank you for being the program as you heard Kali openly and we hoping that you will participate in the big way and to ensure that of course we eat fresh St. Lucia's best our culture is our business and remember we have to eat what we produce here in St. Lucia thank you again I am Philip St. saying goodbye and see you again