Agriculture Minister Lisa Jawahir says better coordination between the Ministry of Agriculture and local poultry farmers is needed to prevent another egg shortage like the one now affecting supermarket shelves in Saint Lucia.
For over a month, shoppers have found empty or nearly empty egg shelves at several supermarkets.
Speaking to reporters outside parliament on Tuesday, August 11, Jawahir acknowledged the problem and said the ministry had contacted farmers to see how it could help.
However, she explained that by then, some farmers had already chosen to replace their chickens. She said this decision affected local egg production.
“We reached out to the egg farmers to see what other support the ministry could have provided, but they had already decided to turn over their chickens at that point in time,” Jawahir said.
The minister said this situation shows the need for stronger communication between producers and the government, especially as Saint Lucia works to expand domestic food production.
Asked how similar shortages could be prevented in the future, Jawahir said there should be “more open conversations with the farmers” and that producers need to maintain a closer relationship with the ministry.
She said this is particularly important “now that we have our agenda for expansion of our food sector and our ultimate goal of achieving self-sufficiency”.
Jawahir made it clear that the government does not plan to get directly involved in commercial egg production.
“The government does not want to invest in hatcheries; we don’t want to go into production because we have several farmers that are doing this on a large scale,” she explained.
Instead, she said the government’s role is to set policies that help production and to support farmers when needed.
Jawahir also pointed out that many people involved in egg production are not registered with the Ministry of Agriculture.
“Well, we have many egg farmers. A lot of them are not entirely registered with the Ministry of Agriculture,” she said, describing registration as one of the tasks the ministry must address going forward.
The minister encouraged existing and prospective poultry farmers to work with the ministry’s extension officers and technical personnel, who can offer guidance and help them become registered.
She also noted that registration lets farmers access government incentives and benefits available to the agricultural sector.
“If you want to be a registered farmer so you can benefit from government incentives, you know, the concessions that are available for your sector, I advise strongly that farmers get registered,” Jawahir said.
She clarified that there is no government policy stopping farmers from selling directly to supermarkets or other distributors. She said agreements with individual farmers are up to the retailers, including any standards and inspections they require.
Jawahir stressed that registration becomes particularly important when producers require government assistance following major disruptions.
“If anything happens and on a large scale government needs to provide support, government would ultimately provide support to persons who, of course, register,” she said.
St. Lucia has always had shortages of essential commodities!
This latest excuse & promised amelioration from government officials is the lip-service that has been forthcoming, as always, to appease consumers in the short term while local producers and retailers continue to extort profits from consumers, who are helpless to resist increased prices on those desperately needed commodities.
Past and present governments of St. Lucia have refused to divorce from the Colonial ill-defined mentality. St. Lucians today, continues to expect hand-outs from the same racist Westerns countries that recently denied them entry to the lands.
For decades the island nation past governments main focus was to developed and build vanity concrete jungles with zero strategic value while denying the citizenry food, health, energy, and economic sovereignty.
The egotism existing mazes planners operates on the term “placing the Cart before the Horse” by creating a tourist industry without the most important infrastructure, of water and power to support their mega resorts, while paying little attention of farming the fertile land to feed the population.
The topography of St. Lucia in comparison to other smaller Islands in the Caribbean region makes it a country if competent long term strategic planning were effectively implemented could have become a self-sufficient country without the need for high-cost food and energy imports.
At the end of the day, the postmortem of St. Lucian governments mismanagement of its internal resources and economy rest on their failure to consider harboring all its natural resources of Solar, Wind, and Geothermal power.
With the power of the foregoing energy resources producing water and home-grown foods for the population, St. Lucia could eliminate the need for expensive food and energy imports.
The next competent, elected government of St. Lucia should follow and adopt the Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso policy to free his country from Western influence domination, and dependance.