The Trinidad and To­ba­go Agri-Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­BA) is one of the col­lab­o­rat­ing part­ners in a re­gion­al ini­tia­tive to boost food se­cu­ri­ty. The project with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wa­genin­genin the Nether­lands tar­gets Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, St Kitts/Nevis and T&T and is aimed an en­sur­ing food sup­plies "over the long term, in the midst of the con­stant­ly chang­ing agro-eco­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment and for con­serv­ing and util­is­ing the se­lect­ed germplasm", project co­or­di­na­tor Nor­man Gib­son said.

It was launched re­cent­ly with a work­shop host­ed with the Eu­ro­pean De­vel­op­ment Fund (EDF), which had the theme Im­prov­ing Caribbean Food Se­cu­ri­ty in the con­text of Cli­mate Change, at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-SpainDeputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Stephanie El­der-Alexan­der, said the Caribbean was not im­mune to cli­mat­ic events which im­pact on soil fer­til­i­ty and suit­abil­i­ty for crop pro­duc­tion, crop and for­age pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, live­stock pro­duc­tion, pro­lif­er­a­tion of in­sect pests and dis­eases and changes in wa­ter sup­ply.

She de­scribed the project as "a much an­tic­i­pat­ed and over­due ini­tia­tive for Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean". Al­so ad­dress­ing the work­shop were Kathrin Ren­ner, EU Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Del­e­ga­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union to T&T; As­sem­bly­man God­win Adams, Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture, Ma­rine Af­fairs, Mar­ket­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and Bruce Lauck­n­er, Of­fi­cer in Charge, Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (Car­di).