Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member countries are seeking ways of building on existing initiatives to realise improvement in their food security status even as collectively, they share a food import bill thought to be in the vicinity of around US$5 billion at this time.
Last week the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) unveiled a new project that targets the enhancement of food security and agricultural productivity through improvement in the production, processing, and marketing of sweet potato in the region.
The CDB is backing the initiative with a US$600,000 grant to the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) to finance the research and capacity-building initiative. CARDI itself is providing the counterpart funding for a project, the overall cost of which is estimated at US$810,000.
