By Machela Osagboro
An agricultural workshop will be held to promote the education and training of farmers by teaching them innovative ways to use information, communication and technology (ICT) to improve their earning potential.
The event will be on the 3rd and 4th of February at the Environment Division at 9:00 a.m. today. The discussions are aimed at exchanging knowledge to understand ways in which farmers can use learning as a form of security to get more financial injection into the sector.
The event will include all the stakeholders
and financial institution as well as ministry officials who will be updated on
the progress that farmers of made in the management of their agricultural products.
Dr. Moses Tenwa – Education Specialist with the Commonwealth of Learning
established in Canada, said that this is, “A kind of reflection to hear the
progress that has been made and the challenges so that we can then be able to
plan how best to move forward, so that we can be able to meet the sustainable
development goals.”
This initiative is of particular interest to Tenwa because farmers in Antigua “have low capital, and they cannot access credit, because the banks consider them to be risk investments.”
He posits that farmers are not at their full earning potential because they need to integrate technology in their profession, and learn new ways to understand changes in behavior of the markets that will allow them to capitalise on earning more.
Tenwa further added that “we use learning as a way of overcoming challenges, and one of the innovations is that can we use learning; the farmers who have been trained and gained sufficient knowledge can use it as a bankable proposal to access credit from the banks.”
He said that farmers have been using this model in Asia and Tanzania and it has been working so far.
The Commonwealth of Learning Program has been working with the Ministry of Agriculture since 2017 to improve the agricultural product of the country.
It is promoting education and training by the use of ICT and open-distance learning.