by Linda Straker
- Caribbean Week of Agriculture to launch on Tuesday, 15 July
- 18 successful editions of CWA since first held in Trinidad and Tobago in 1999
- CWA convened under aegis of The Alliance
Agriculture Minister Lennox Andrews has confirmed that Grenada will be participating in the 19th edition of the Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA), which will be held in St Kitts and Nevis from 29 September to 3 October under the theme “Sowing Change, Harvesting Resilience: Transforming Our Caribbean Food Systems for 2025 and Beyond.”
“We at the ministry will be having a delegation for the week of agriculture, and that delegation will include farmers; they will be getting the exposure for products and markets in the region,” said Andrews, who is also the Minister for Marine Affairs and Economic Development and Planning.
The event will be launched on Tuesday, 15 July 2025. The virtual launch will feature a keynote address by the Hon. Samal Duggins, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Marine Resources of St Kitts and Nevis; remarks by Dr Wendell Samuel, Caricom Assistant Secretary-General (ag), Economic Integration, Innovation and Development; Teesha Mangra, Chair of the Caricom Youth Advisory Body, and representatives from regional and international organisations which are partnering to hold the CWA.
“The Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) is the premier event on the regional agricultural calendar. It is a roving event hosted by Caricom Member States and Associate Members and includes seminars, key meetings, a special meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED), and an exhibition,” said a Caricom news release.
The CWA was conceptualised by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) as a facility to place agriculture and rural life on the front burner of regional integration activities and in doing so enable:
- the key decision-makers in the public and private sectors to better acknowledge the importance of agriculture and rural life to the economic, social, and environmental stability of the region
- the major stakeholders in agriculture and related sectors to have an opportunity to dialogue and forge a common vision for the repositioning of agriculture and the enhancement of rural life
The CWA is convened under the aegis of the Alliance for Sustainable Development of Agriculture and the Rural Milieu (The Alliance). From the inaugural meeting in 1998, the two main collaborating agencies were IICA and the Caribbean Community (Caricom) Secretariat.
Providing details on the background of the event, the release said that in 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) joined IICA and Caricom to establish a core group which functions as the Secretariat of The Alliance.
“Since then, the 4 agencies have collaborated on the management and logistics necessary for the convening and servicing of meetings of The Alliance, as well as the myriad of activities during the CWA. The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) which was a joint international institution of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States and the European Union (EU) from 1983–2020, was a major partner and sponsor of the CWA activities from 2003,” said the Caricom release.
To date, there have been 18 successful editions of the CWA. The first CWA was held in Trinidad and Tobago in 1999. Last year, St Vincent and the Grenadines hosted the event. Close to 500 visitors joined Vincentians for the week of activities that focused on “Climate-Smart Agriculture for a Sustainable Future.”
