 Farmers in the community of Grey's Viewfort got an opportunity to raise awareness of the challenges they faced in banana production, this time through face-to-face discussions with Agriculture Minister Honourable Alfred Prosper. The farmers expressed a variety of concerns, including the high cost of fertilizer and other farm inputs, as well as market access. The Minister acknowledged that the current state of the banana industry makes it difficult for farmers to produce high-quality products efficiently and reiterated his commitment to look into ways to assist banana farmers in improving the quality of their produce. Since COVID, the cost of shipping has increased drastically and we have also seen the cost of raw materials increasing, so at the end of the day the farmers are now paying almost double the price of a bag of fertilizer and it is really causing a serious strain on them. It is contributing to the cost of production of bananas and knowing that Hurricane Elsa impacted most of those farmers in July, they have not been able to get a chance to sell the bananas and so obviously they will be financially stressed. As a Ministry, I understand their concerns and the Ministry will be making every effort to see how it can assist the farmers in getting the fertilizer and other farm inputs at a subsidized price that would be affordable to them and they would be comfortable that they can continue to ensure that they get the fertilizer and other farm inputs at the right time. Minister Prosper explained that while it is critical to improve production standards in order to maintain international market penetration, he also encourages St. Lucians to show their support by purchasing and consuming local bananas. I do not believe that we are consuming enough of our bananas. We export our bananas to England, we've been doing that for decades and decades, but I have not seen a huge increase in the consumption of our bananas and with a population of approximately 175,000 persons, if at least one person can consume one banana a day, that indicates the amount of bananas that we can consume and I'm not seeing that in any way to give the impression that because of the situation in the UK, that we think that the local consumption will take care of the exports, but if we are focusing on exports to the UK, focusing originally and we are doing ourselves the good of consuming what we grow, I think it is good for our country, it is good for our health, it is good for our children. Minister Prosper expressed his intention to continue meeting with banana farmers throughout St. Lucia in order to engage them and discuss the assistance they require from the St. Lucia government as part of efforts to improve the quality of crops produced in St. Lucia. From the communications unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, I am Anicia Antoine reporting.