Grenada hosts training session for Farmers to advance Sea Moss Production

Grenada: The training of farmers and technicians for the advancement of sea moss production took place in Grenada. This was held in collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)  and the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, Forestry, Marine Resources and Cooperatives.

Such a collaboration through the training held would work with the farmers on improving their practices in the sea moss production. Considerably, the training is a week-long Programme where more that 40 sea moss farmers, technicians and extension officers participated.

This week-long training session was delivered under a project of FAO’s Technical Cooperation Programme on Promoting Competitive, Sustainable and Resilient National Value Chain Development in Grenada.

This training programme imparted the best practices for improving sea moss production using the training of trainers (ToT) approach in the form of classroom and field-based instruction. Through the training, sea moss farmers, with various levels of experience and knowledge revealed their participation to exchange their experiences. 

As well, their joining fostered the part where they learnt more about setting up different production systems in shallow and deep water and better post-harvest practices. During the opening ceremony of the training, Acting Chief Fisheries Officer- Mr Justin Rennie highlighted that the training workshop would help to build the capacity of farmers in Grenada to produce sea moss under the controlled conditions.

Significantly, the sessions held provided an aid to strengthen the collaboration between sea moss farmers. As well, it provided support in increasing the capacity to produce quality sea moss. 

Not only this, the training session reemphasized on the importance of farmer to farmer exchanges and the need for continued dialogue between other stakeholders in the value chain who are involved in the marketing and exporting.

Along with this, the officials as well made a visit to site and have projected the suitability assessment report on the findings brought from the training. And, this will be submitted to the Agriculture Ministry in the coming weeks.