Agriculture ministry targeting fisheries development

SHAUN BAUGH, director of policy and planning at the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries described the upcoming Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) workshop as timely, given that the ministry is in the process of updating its sector strategy, with an emphasis on fisheries development.

“We are working with our partners to make it a little bit more modern, a little bit more responsive to what you and our clients and constituents are more in keeping with, and what we want to see for the sector. More impor tant, we want to make it climate resilient and also to account for the various gender issues which are now emerging as a critical part of rural development.

“A majority of the population lives in the rural area below the poverty line, and if you were to dissect that a little more, you would find that women in the rural areas are more affected by poverty,” Baugh admitted.

He said t hat Vision 2030 fell within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that the United Nation has set and Jamaica has signed on to. Baugh said that the auditor general has now made it a point of duty to audit, the ministry’s programmes, plans and projects to assess if they were, in fact, in keeping with the SDGs the country inked.

“So it’s impor tant what I’m presenting here today, to show the alignment that as a ministry and as agriculture and fisheries portfolio, to show that we are not planning in isolation but as a part of a bigger picture.”

The main task of the 35th FAO regional conference will be to discuss solutions for each of the various challenges and develop as a matter of urgency, an agenda to fight hunger and malnutrition, build a future without rural pover ty, and transform agriculture to be sustainable and resilient to climate change.