Management heads and supervisors representing various departments and divisions within the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, Fisheries and Cooperatives convened at the Grenada National Stadium recently for a retreat geared at brainstorming ways to transform the sector.
The retreat was held under the theme: Transformative Development: Ensuring Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Development in the Agriculture Sector.
Its objective was to examine with senior managers and staff the meaning and goal of transformative change and development; and how it can be reflected in the vision, goals, and priorities of the Ministry.
Presentations were made by Minister for Agriculture and Lands, Fisheries and Cooperatives, Senator Adrian Thomas, Permanent Secretary, Aaron Francois, Transition lead for the Ministry, Gemma Bain-Thomas, and Economist Dr. Ronanne Brizan-St. Martin.
The day’s activity was broken up into work group sessions: Governance; Agro-processing, agri-business and agro-tourism; Marine Resource & Blue Economy; Cooperatives, where group members were tasked with brainstorming transformational ideas to take these subsectors forward.
At the end of the retreat, senior managers and other members of staff:
i. Gained an understanding of transformative development.
ii. Became acquainted with the transformative agenda of the Government of Grenada.
iii. Understood the transformative policy agenda for the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, Forestry, Fisheries and Co-operatives.
iv. Translated the policy agenda into specific plans and programmes for the Ministry.
v. Agreed on the priority areas for the Ministry for the period 2023 to 2025
vi. Established a framework to commence the process for the review, updating or development of the National Agricultural Policy, the Agriculture Strategic Plan, the Corporate Plan.
vii. Reviewed the budget process in the development of the Ministry’s 2023 to 2025 budget.
viii. Identified project proposals to meet the transformational goals.
