USAID-Funded Caribbean Agricultural Productivity improvement Activity (CAPA)

Sandiford Edwards

Program Director 

Improving Economies for Stronger Communities (IESC), implementing partner for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Caribbean Agricultural Productivity improvement Activity (CAPA), is pleased to be accorded the opportunity to join with other development partners and stakeholders to support the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat in hosting this year’s Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA).

This 18^th CWA is occurring on the hills of hurricane Beryl which negatively impacted the agriculture ecosystem and infrastructure in several countries in the Region. These climatic events are a stark reminder of the urgency required to build resilient food systems capable of withstanding the vagaries of climate change.

USAID CAPA focuses on enhancing regional food security by increasing fruit and vegetable productivity, building the capacity of buyers and input suppliers to strengthen relationships with farmers, improving farm-level extension systems, and efficient use of climate data for agricultural decision making which is well aligned with the regional agriculture agenda and this year’s theme of “Climate Smart Agriculture for Sustainable Future”

CAPA is implemented in Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad & Tobago, and has four objectives:

• Objective 1: Increase smallholder market-led production of fruits and vegetables.
• Objective 2: Improve domestic and regional market linkages for smallholder farmers.
• Objective 3: Strengthen public/private sector extension skills and capacity.
• Objective 4: Improve data collection and utilization on the impacts of climate change/weather patterns on agricultural production.

Achieving the ‘Climate Smart Agriculture for Sustainable Future’ mandate will require all stakeholders to actively collaborate to deliver results with impact at scale. USAID CAPA’s contribution to both this 18^th CWA and beyond, will continue to drive increased productivity of producers through the introduction of innovative and climate smart on-farm technologies as part of our demonstration farm-based training model.

During this CWA, USAID CAPA will highlight our market-led approach to improving market linkages, interventions to build producers’ capacity to effectively conduct their farming enterprise as a business and support to financial institutions to better assess risk and lending to the agriculture sector.

Specific to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, USAID CAPA has developed a commercial and operating model for the sustainable and profitable operation of the Montreal Greenhouse Facility and has provided technical support to the Technical Colleague to introduce various technologies to be used in training the next generation of smart producers. Additionally, we intend to further engage the CARICOM Secretariat and partners to explore new innovative ideas and collaboration opportunities to strengthen regional agriculture. We place on record our appreciation to the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines for hosting this event and commit our technical competencies in the pursuit of regional food security.