The Department of Agriculture, St. Kitts in collaboration with Caribbean Chemicals and Agencies Limited in Trinidad, is this week hosting a three-day workshop for farmers and technical staff dubbed, “The Crop Protection Symposium”.
The workshop which began on Wednesday, 25th January is being facilitated by the Technical Sales Agronomist of Caribbean Chemicals and Agencies Ltd, Kennedy Paul and focuses on new developments in all aspects of plant protection.
During the opening of the workshop which is being held in the Large Conference Room at the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Paul who has also been operating as a Technical Sales Consultant for the company over the last seven years explained that he has been tasked with the responsibility of educating farmers about the most suitable methods of pest and disease management.
“I hope to help them to identify the common pest and insect problems in St. Kitts and Nevis and basically recommend best practices or suggest best practices for managing those pests effectively and also in a sustainable manner”, Paul explained.
He said the workshop which is scheduled to end on Friday, 27th January 2023 will wrap up with a practical session to better educate the staff at the Department. The Technical Sales Agronomist added that this training can help the Department provide further assistance to farmers. Paul said, “We are having a more technical session for the extension staff where we will go a lot more in-depth in terms of the pesticide resistance tolerance, etc.
So the last day of the three-day symposium which will be on Friday will be for the technical staff which is the extension staff. We will be going a lot more in-depth and teaching them which pesticides are best to use so they are better able to recommend the correct pesticides to the farmers.”
The Plant Protection Symposium will cover topics such as Invasive Pests Identification, The Practice of Integrated Pest Management and Plant Protection in Organic Farming, Protection of the Environment and several other areas of focus.
The workshop is also being offered to staff at the Department of Agriculture on Nevis.