Officials in the Ministry of Agriculture and other key stakeholders were involved in a two-day Food Security Crisis Preparedness Plan Validation Workshop.

The Ministry of Agriculture hosted the workshop in collaboration with the World Bank, to review the National Food Security Crisis Preparedness Plan.

Chief Agricultural Officer, Renato Gumbs, emphasized the importance of data in determining the criteria which would justify when and why a situation can be declared a crisis.

"This session is to review what have we prepared so far in actually determining when we get to the stage when we can declare a crisis. And what basically we are doing here, we are coming up with a methodology to determine when we get to that point.  So, we are here to come up with that methodology and that methodology is to remove the subjectivity that anyone could on his own or own relation just come and say boy we are in a crisis and the others don't agree.  So, if you have an instrument that determines when we declare a crisis it will save all of us the trouble."

Representing the World Bank, Senior Agricultural Economist, Winston Dawes, said the plan puts a country in a better position to mobilize funding and resources to respond to a crisis in a timely manner.

"There's a lot of work that has gone into the preparation of the Preparedness Plan and we are at this point where we want to get your input and validation of this plan. We know that a lot of consultations took place with not just only the Ministry of Agriculture but other Ministries, other Agencies, Development Partners... so it is a collective effort. And it's also part of an important what you call builder ownership, Ownership of the plan. This is not, I know that the World Bank has supported the Plan, but it is the Government of Saint Vincent's Preparedness Plan not the World Bank's Plan, so I want us to remember that this is important that it need to be owned, managed and it's going to be implemented by the Government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines."

SOURCE: National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC Radio)