Business View Caribbean | February 2021

53 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN FEBRUARY 2021 CAR I BBEAN AGR I CULTURE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT INST I TUTE (CARDI ) of Agriculture annual meeting, we and our partners present various policy options for their consideration. The strategic plan for 2020 to 2030 has now been launched and a set of clusters was established. One is the cluster for Agriculture and Food and Nutrition Security, where national and regional entities – kindred spirits – meet on a monthly basis chaired by CARDI to articulate policy issues that would then be presented to the Ministers.” BVC: What excites you for the future of agriculture in the Caribbean and how will CARDI take part? Clarke: “The key thing that excites me is the commitment by the political directorate to food security. This was a movement cemented by COVID-19 and it means greater investments in the agricultural sector, especially in research and development. The advent of the Caribbean Private Sector Organization, where there is some commitment on their part to invest in the sector whenever and wherever it is profitable to do so, that is where CARDI comes in. We are now doing investment profiles, so they can see if they invest in an area of technology for a certain commodity that we advocate then you can have a decent return on your investment. That will help in the mandate for reducing the food import by 25 percent by 2025. “And then, the opportunity afforded us by taking advantage of information and communication technology. The Universities of the West Indies and tertiary level institutions are busy coming up with different computer-based applications – artificial intelligence, robotics, drones – we’ve seen that emerge where the rural development authority of Jamaica used drone technology to remotely assess the damage done by hurricanes, instead of having to go into the field. And the fact that the heads of government have also adopted an agenda to make the Caribbean resilient, using among other things, big data, to give us a competitive edge in the marketplace. All that is making for an exciting time going forward.” Placing hot pepper plants under isolation cages is critical in the Institute’s seed production programme.