By Carlena Knight
Plans to restructure operations at the Central Marketing Corporation (CMC) are moving forward.
Agriculture Minister, Samantha Marshall, told Observer yesterday that a team is set to meet with regional experts to help in improving not only CMC’s operations but other agricultural entities as well.
“We do have a gentleman by the name of Dunstan Demille who is one of the senior managers at the Massy Supermarkets in St Lucia; we had a meeting via Zoom with him, and based on those discussions, IICA (Inter American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture) was a part of those discussions as well, and so we are going to be bringing him in. He is actually landing today,” she said.
“We have another team that is dealing with him, and the whole aim is to do a full assessment of our operations, not just at CMC, but at the ADC which is the Agricultural Development Corporation, otherwise known as Diamonds, engaging more with the farmers and seeing what it is the farmers would like to see in terms of our ability to market their products,” Marshall explained.
She said the aim is to enhance marketability and also address other areas of concern, like water, for farmers so that they can focus solely on their trade.
Marshall said a number of other investments and partnerships will come on stream to that effect.
“We don’t want farmers having to worry about marketing. We want people to produce more and we want farmers to get serious about it.
“We are investing significant amounts of monies in osmosis plants to ensure that there’s increased production of water, and in addition to that, the ministry is partnering with FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] to do some other solar plants which we are now doing the assessment for to increase our production of water,” she revealed.
Marshall went on to say that it is her hope to improve upon the poor relationship between farmers and CMC.
The agriculture minister first announced her ministry’s plan to reconfigure CMC in May of this year while addressing farmers during a public consultation at the Multipurpose Centre.
She acknowledged at the time complaints made by farmers that CMC had strayed from its original purpose, which is to provide an avenue for farmers to make sales, and instead had taken on its own produce enterprise.
However, she assured the farmers that changes are being made to the entity.