Minister of Agriculture Saboto Caesar is calling on the nation’s farmers to be more proactive in curbing post harvest wastage.
Caesar, while speaking on Star Radio appealed to farmers to find alternative markets and uses, such as agro-processing, for their produce that do not meet their required standards.
“When persons, for example, are harvesting, let’s say peppers, they may be harvesting the peppers to place under a plastic cling wrap to go onto the supermarket shelves but there may be a pepper there with a blemish, where it doesn’t make the grade 1, and usually it’s a practice that the farmer would just discard it. Just throw it there in the field. I want for persons to be aware that in a time of scarcity globally, that we have to reduce the post harvest losses and wastage,” Caesar said.
Minister Caesar called on SVG’s farmers to be proactive as he pointed out the losses they will incur by just simply leaving this produce that does not meet the grade 1 standard to rot or be disposed of in other ways.
“I want for farmers to be proactive. It’s easy as I said, to just throw the grade 2 or the grade 3 and just leave it there but what they’re leaving there—you already paid for the fertilizer to bare that pepper; you already paid the farmer to take care of that plant, from planting it to taking care of it and even reaping it. You have already paid for the water that you’re using to do the washing, the persons to do the sorting, the transportation that was involved—your own labour as well!—and by just discarding it there, you are discarding a percentage of your profit, a percentage of your margin,” he said.
Minister Caesar said that in times such as now, it should be high on the list of the priorities of these farmers to reduce this wastage by as much as possible.
Another suggestion made by the Minister is for these farmers to seek out vulnerable members in their community who can benefit from the use of the produce that would otherwise be wasted.
