Minister of Agriculture Dr Shantal Munro-Knight on Monday laid out an ambitious roadmap to reposition agriculture as a pillar of national resilience, with sweeping reforms, expanded technical capacity, and roughly $272m in priority investments, while reshaping how Barbadians think about farming and food security.

She told a breakfast colloquium –  Looking Forward: Agriculture 2030 – hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and Nutritional Security at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre on Monday that Barbados must move beyond viewing agriculture as food production and instead recognise it as central to the country’s economic, environmental and social development.

“We talk about agriculture only in relation to open field agriculture, only about its production elements, and therefore we’ve made agriculture very small at a national level,” she said, as she addressed industry stakeholders.