Saint Lucia Government commences UBEC programme

Saint Lucia : The Government of Saint Lucia continues its dedication to improving food security throughout the country, has taken a significant step by launching the commencement of the fertilizer rollout under the "Unleashing the Blue Economy of the Caribbean" initiative.

There are two recent initiatives for the cause with the first one being the UBEC Project. The "Unleashing the Blue Economy of the Caribbean" is a long-term project intended to strengthen the nation's Blue Economy while simultaneously boosting climate resilience.

The initiative is funded by the World Bank with a series of projects spanning three distinct five-year phases from 2023 to 2038.

The key sectors this initiative affects during the first phase (2023-2028) include Tourism, waste management, fisheries & aquaculture, and environmental sustainability.

The programme involves providing free fertilizer to registered farmers, namely focused on fruits, vegetables and spices.

This initiative was partially put into place to recover from the economic loss that was the result of Covid-19.

The second initiative is the "Hurricane Recovery Support". On the 6^th of July, 2023 Hurricane Brett made landfall in Saint Lucia, this act of nature brought about significant economic damage to the island nation including damage to established infrastructure, a disruption in the tourism industry and most notably agricultural losses from crops being destroyed, namely the banana and plantain industries both of which are crucial agricultural exports for the nation.

This increased debt, and unemployment, disrupted supply chains and cost the nation an estimated 5-10% GDP decline.

To counteract the outcome of these events, the government launched the Hurricane Recovery Support initiative. The government partnered with the National Fair Trade Organization to offer fertilizer and other essential supplies to banana and plantain farmers. The Kingdom of Morocco, along with other diplomatic support, also donated a generous amount of fertilizer to get the agricultural sector back on its feet.

While there was not a lot of public discussion about these initiatives and was for the larger part understood to be dormant and operating in the background, the Saint Lucian government took to Twitter to announce the commencement of fertilizer rollout under the UBEC project.

They also shared a two-and-a-half-minute informative video by the Ministry of Agriculture, where they shared that “A total dispersal of thirty-four thousand bags of fertilizer across the eight agricultural regions has begun, with farmers set to receive four bags weighing twenty-five kilograms per acre.”

Alfred Prospere, the minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Rural Development stated “this is a very good level of support for our farmers under the programme… and this will give the farmers the hope, the courage that agriculture is important and encourage them to understand the importance of them being and contributing to the agriculture sector”

He goes on to say “Every single farmer will be able to receive at least one bag under this programme”

This is part of a larger 10 million US dollar program for food and nutrition insecurity. Other initiatives include the distribution of 500 water tanks, the initiation of a pilot Farm labour program, and extensive desilting efforts targeting major drainage areas.