Developing climate smart agriculture in Grenada

ST.GEORGE’S GRENADA JANUARY 15, 2016- GIS: Government is partnering with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and people in action to establish self-sufficient communities through Permaculture, or the use of modern science for sustainability.

John Stollmeyer Director of Caribbean Permaculture Consultants told GIS the idea is to get communities to be creative with ideas for production that are inexpensive to start, but with big profit margins.

“We’re setting up a model where we will be teaching permaculture, so people will come in and learn the skills and go back into their communities and share those skills.  The first rule in permaculture is to find a yield, that means a product to take to market, and what we stress is to find simple processes, very low tech processes that can create a high value product,” Stollmeyer said .

Naba Francis GIZ’s Technical Officer said Grenada’s agriculture sector stands to benefit tremendously from the adaptation of Climate Smart Strategies.

“I believe that climate smart agricultural practices are the ways that we can build the agriculture sector in Grenada so that it can adapt to the climate changes.

The agriculture sector has been identified as one the most vulnerable sectors to climate change, and it’s very important that we build a climate resilient agriculture sector,” Francis said.

The model farm will be open for experiments by the end of 2016.