Monday, September 17 2012

Trinidad and Tobago will be the site for a three-day regional workshop that starts tomorrow on “Enhancing the value added processing of roots and tubers in the Caribbean through the transfer of improved technologies'”.

This workshop is being held as part of the collaborative efforts of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and its partners including the Ministry of Food Production in Trinidad and Tobago (MFP), the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), the Trinidad and Tobago Agribusiness Association (TTABA), and CLAYUCA (Latin American and Caribbean Consortium to support Cassava Research and Development) of Colombia.

The workshop is an integral component of a project funded through the IICA Competitive Fund for Technical Cooperation (FonTC) which seeks to transfer improved production and processing technologies specifically for cassava and sweet potato. The project is being pursued against the background of the vast potential in the region for increasing the production and value added processing of roots and tubers as a means of increasing the local availability of staple foods and thus reducing the region’s high and increasing food import bill.

It is widely accepted that if the Caribbean region is to exploit the potential for the development of local industries based on the processing of roots and tubers, significant capacity building and training targeted particularly at small and medium sized processors is required.

The workshop will be held until Thursday at The Cascadia Hotel and Conference Centre, Port-of-Spain and it is expected that 45 participants including processors and personnel from development institutions from across the region will be in attendance.