The St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines gov­ern­ment says it has launched “Op­er­a­tion Home­grown” aimed at boost­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of lo­cal farm­ers and back­yard gar­den­ers to in­crease food pro­duc­tion.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Saboto Cae­sar said that with the im­port tar­iffs from the Unit­ed States, it is im­por­tant that there should be in­creas­es in the the pro­duc­tion of crops and poul­try to meet lo­cal de­mands.

“We are work­ing close­ly with the Ze­ro Hunger Trust and we are go­ing to in­ten­si­fy our work with the farm­ers’ sup­port com­pa­ny…in St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines,” Cae­sar said, not­ing “we are an im­porter of large quan­ti­ties of poul­try, we want to en­sure that over the com­ing weeks, months, years that we re­duce the im­por­ta­tion of poul­try an we in­crease pro­duc­tion”.