Farmer Registration Process Going Well in St. Thomas

The registration of farmers in St. Thomas, under the Ministry of Agriculture’s Farmer Registration Programme, is currently having a success rate of 80 per cent..
Parish Manager at the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) office in St Thomas, Caswell Glover, told JIS News at a Coffee Industry Board Farmers Meeting, at Hayfield Square, that of about 8,000 targeted farmers, over 6,600 have been registered.
He says with the ongoing outreach programmes, the remaining farmers in the parish should be registered by the end of March.
“By April we should have captured all the farmers who are registered and we should, by that time, be able to verify all those farmers who have registered but not verified,” he said.
Mr. Glover pointed out that an effort is made, wherever there are workshops, training seminars, farmers’ workday or any gathering targeting farmers in the parish, to register farmers in the ongoing registration programme. This he said has been yielding more significant success than farmers coming into the office on their own to be registered.
The registration process captures the data needed to give a full picture of what is being farmed and who is farming, including name of farmer, location, ID, contact number, type of crop, type of livestock and when that was established.
“We update that information from time to time, because a farmer might have harvested that crop,” he told JIS News.
Mr. Glover added that whenever new persons enter the field, they too are registered so as to complete the agricultural picture for the island.
The registration programme was announced by Agriculture Minister, Dr. Christopher Tufton, during his 2008/09 budget presentation.
The Minister stressed the need for farmers to be registered so that the Ministry could identify their location and what they are doing, and be better able to plan and co-ordinate activities to ensure that they produce enough to feed the nation.
“Those farmers, who ignore or refuse to comply, cannot be guaranteed benefits from Government programmes. To put it another way, if you are not registered, then we have no record of you and cannot plan for you. We therefore urge all farmers to take up this offer,” Dr. Tufton said.
Once farmers are registered and given their identification cards (IDs), they will be able to use their IDs to access all the RADA and Ministry of Agriculture services across the country.