St Kitts and Nevis: More than a dozen Aquaponics farmers in St. Kitts and Nevis are participating in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) “Advancing Aquaponics through Business Plan Development in the Eastern Caribbean” workshop which launched on Monday.
Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, Marine Resources and Cooperatives, Samal Duggins made an appearance at the workshop on Wednesday 20th October at the Department of Marine Resources. He used the opportunity to engage with the participants and pledged the government’s commitment to assist with the development of Aquaponics in its quest to enhance food security.
The hybrid training will be conducted in two parts; Part one is the Training of Trainers two-day session focusing on the topics business planning, capital expenditure/capex, operating expense/opex, revenue, cashflow, profit, marketing and the aquaponics calculator, while part two is an interactive session with guest speakers from a financial institution, a supermarket and/or restaurant and aquaponics farmers. It will be staggered into five modules over ten (10) weeks.
The ‘Aquaponics Business Plan’ course will guide farmers in developing a business plan for their startups and/or expansion of their small-medium sized aquaponics farms.
Participating countries under the ‘Harnessing Blue Economy Finance’ are Barbados, Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, while countries under the ‘Resilient Aquaculture’ project are Grenada, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago.
A maximum of fifteen aquaponics farmers in each of the six countries will be trained over a period of six weeks. The Aquaponics farmers are expected to present draft business plans at the end of the workshops.
Funding for the trainings is provided by the ‘Harnessing Blue Economy Finance’ project, with facilitation and coordination support from the ‘Resilient Aquaculture’ project.
The World Food Day— East Basseterre Fishing Tournament turned out to be a massive success. Michael Maynard came out on top winning first prize for the Biggest Yellow Fin Tuna and recording the most weight overall.
