The COVID-19 pandemic which has caused a major economic global downturn has also created an environment where countries are unwilling to trade with one another as they are more concerned with their own citizens.
This was explained by the Director of Marine Resources, Dr. Marc Williams, during an exclusive interview with SKNIS on March 23 at the Greenleaf Farm where he said that because of this, the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis has to produce its own food for its citizens.
The way forward Dr. Williams said, is through aquaponics. Dr. Williams said that “In St. Kitts and Nevis, we can do more with aquaponics, than we can do with traditional agriculture, as traditional agriculture is faced with a number of issues, we have to compete for residential uses for the land that we have.”
He said that previously the land would have been covered with sugar cane fields but due to the population increase within the Federation, land needed to be allocated for residential use.
“This project came about as a result of our aquaculture development strategy that we established in 2013 from 2013 to 2023.”
“We received assistance from the FAO to do some aquaponics training within the course of this year and this week we started our first training workshop in the aquaponics development so that St. Kitts and Nevis can sure up its food and nutrition insecurity issues,” said Director Williams.
“Over the years we had some variabilities in fish landings as a result of climate change and also as a result of a lack of fishing effort,” he said.
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