Caribbean farmers to embrace innovative Climate-Smart Agriculture Compliance
Published:Monday | December 9, 2024 | 12:06 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Farmers in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean will soon have access to the innovative Climate-Smart Agriculture Compliance (C-SAC), a global labelling tool, which is expected to provide them with immediate benefits.
Steve Maximay, an expert in climate-smart farming and marketing, who spoke at last Thursday’s World Soil Day/C-SAC Training of Trainers event, which took place at the St Elizabeth Technical High School in St Elizabeth, said the farmers will now be better equipped to boost their capacity in food production.
Among those present for Maximay’s presentation were extension officers aligned to the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), and other key stakeholders from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining and the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development.
Maximay, a climate-smart agriculture and marketing expert with the Soil Care Phase One project under the Partnership Initiative for Sustainable Land Management (PISLM), an inter-governmental organisation within CARICOM, said C-SAC is a tool that farmers can use as a self-assessment guide to see how climate-smart their operations are.
“Extension officers can also use it to train farmers in climate-smart agriculture,” said Maximay. “Equally important is the fact that it is also going to be part of an eco-friendly, climate-smart label, where we have measurable proof that the produce that is being displayed or sold was produced in a climate-smart agriculture manner.”
GLOBAL SIGNIFICANCE
Speaking with Maximay after his presentation, he said, ”It will be labelling standards that have global significance, similar to what Fairtrade does for produce and what Green Globe does for hotels and tourism products.”
Maximay said C-SAC, which is already the system operating in St Vincent and the Grenadines, will shortly become operational in Dominica, Antigua and several other PISLM countries.
“So, now we’ll have an agriculture label that will not necessarily be rivalling organic; (but) here we are going to have a mechanism to certify a label domestically using homegrown solutions,” said Maximay. “It means that we now have a way to train people to use a system that will provide immediate rewards, something we refer to as a climate premium, in other words, we are saying we have found a way to reward farmers for doing the right thing.”
When quizzed about the timeline for the implementation in Jamaica, the climate-smart farming expert said the initiative is still in the embryonic stages, while noting that Dominica, and Antiqua, which recently launched the C-SAC global labelling tool, is a step or two ahead of Jamaica.
“There is a season to everything; we are still in literally the teething stages,” Maximay said in outlining where the region is in implementation the new labelling tool. “I don’t realistically see it [the C-SAC global label] hitting the shelves before November of 2025 because it is going to take a while to get the smart contract.”