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From:TheBahamasWeekly.com Community
Tuesday, April 25, 2017, Weekend rains in North Andros have wreaked havoc on various crops. Farmers were inundated with 2.36 inches of rainfall on Sunday causing fields to be flooded. Crop losses are expected to be high, particularly vegetables such as cabbages and cucumbers on BAMSI’s Research and Demonstration Farm. A bumper harvest of onions was expected from the Institute’s Associated Farmers Programme (AFP), which is the flagship of the Outreach/Extension programme and is adversely affected by heavy rainfall. The unpredictability of the weather pattern of the Northern Bahamas has made it necessary to consider greater regional diversity in our food production system by increasing production in the Southeastern Bahamas. The Institute has embarked on the establishment of a network of greenhouses on various islands in the Southeast, namely Eleuthera, Long Island, Exuma, Cat Island and MICAL. The programme will commence in Eleuthera next month.
The greenhouse network will provide on-island farming communities with a range of vegetable seedling planting material as well as banana suckers to restart commercial banana production on these islands. Climate change is emerging as a major threat to agricultural production in The Bahamas. The Institute is introducing climate smart technologies to address this issue. Climate smart agriculture encompasses “the scientific fields of meteorology, climatology, remote sensory, modeling and agricultural statistics.” New drought resistant and salt tolerant varieties have been developed for various crops in conjunction with new technologies such as elevating plots and building water retention systems.
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